Aqualung un player musicale per GNU/Linux e non solo

Tra i molteplici progetti software che come obbiettivo hanno quello di fornire un buon programma per la riproduzione e la gestione audio i più si affidano a soluzioni collaudate come Amarok, Rhythmbox, vlc o altri.

Certamente questi sono software dalle caratteristiche eccellenti e con funzionalità molto avanzate ma trovo giusto dedicare un po di spazio a progetti emergenti che, pur non essendo all’altezza dei cugini più blasonati, hanno dei punti di forza che non dispiacerebbe vedere implementati nei software più conosciuti.

Aqualung è proprio uno di questi; nato qualche tempo fa, più esattamente nel 2005 (se non erro), fa del supporto a tutti i file audio un suo cavallo di battaglia.

Il software, inizialmente nato solo ed esclusivamente per GNU/Linux, è ora multi-piattaforma visto che può essere installato su sistemi Linux, OpenBSD, Windows e FreeBSD.

Vediamo più in dettaglio le sue caratteristiche prendendo spunto direttamente dall’home page del progetto:

On the input side:

• Audio CDs can be played back and ripped to the Music Store with on-the-fly conversion to WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis or CBR/VBR MP3 (gapless via LAME). Seamless tagging of the created files is offered as part of the process.
• Internet radio stations streaming Ogg Vorbis or MP3 are supported.
• Subscribing to RSS and Atom audio podcasts is supported. Aqualung can automatically download and add new files to the Music Store. Optional limits for the age, size and number of downloaded files can be set.
• Almost all sample-based, uncompressed formats (e.g. WAV, AIFF, AU etc.) are supported. For the full list of these formats, visit the libsndfile homepage.
• Files encoded with FLAC (the Free Lossless Audio Codec) are supported.
• Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Speex audio files are supported.
• MPEG Audio files are supported. This includes MPEG 1-2-2.5, Layer I-II-III encoded audio, including the infamous MPEG-1 Layer III format also known as MP3. For tracks containing the appropriate LAME headers, the MPEG encoder delay and padding is eliminated by Aqualung, resulting in truly gapless playback. Aqualung also supports VBR (variable bitrate) and UBR (unspecified bitrate) MPEG files.
• MOD audio files (MOD, S3M, XM, IT, etc.) are supported via the high quality libmodplug library.
• Musepack (a.k.a. MPEG Plus) files are supported.
• Files encoded with Monkey’s Audio Codec are supported.
• WavPack files are supported via a native decoder.
• Numerous formats and codecs are supported via the FFmpeg project, including AC3, AAC, WMA, WavPack and the soundtrack of many video formats.
• Naturally, any of these files can be mono or stereo.

On the output side:

• OSS driver support
• ALSA driver support
• JACK Audio Server support
• Win32 Sound API (available only under native Win32 or Cygwin)
• Exporting files to external formats from Playlist and Music Store is supported.

In between:

• Continuous, gap-free playback of consecutive tracks. Your ears get exactly what is in the files – no silence inserted in between.
• Ability to convert sample rates between the input file and the output device, from downsampling by a factor of 12 to upsampling by the same factor. The best converter provides a signal-to-noise ratio of 97dB with -3dB passband extending from DC to 96% of the theoretical best bandwidth for a given pair of input and output sample rates.
• LADSPA plugin support – you can use any suitable LADSPA plugin to enhance the music you are listening to. There are many different equalizer, spatial enhancer, tube preamp simulator etc. plugins out there. If you don’t have any, grab these.

Other niceties:

• Playlist tabs allow you to have multiple playlists for your music at the same time, very similarly to multiple tabbed browsing in Firefox.
• Internally working volume and balance controls (not touching the soundcard mixer).
• Support for multiple skins; changing them is possible at any time.
• Support for random seeking during playback.
• Track repeat, List repeat and Shuffle mode (besides normal playback). In track repeat mode the looping range is adjustable (A-B repeat).
• Ability to display and edit Ogg Xiph comments, ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE tags found in files that support them.
• All windows are sizable. You can stretch the main window horizontally for more accurate seeking.
• You can control any running instance of the program remotely from the command line (start, stop, pause etc.). Remote loading or enqueueing soundfiles as well as complete playlists is also supported.
• State persistence via XML config files. Aqualung will come up in the same state as it was when you closed it, including playback modes, volume and balance settings, currently processing LADSPA plugins, window sizes, positions and visibility, and other miscellaneous options.

In addition to all this, Aqualung comes with a Music Store that is an XML-based music database, capable of storing various metadata about music on your computer (including, but not limited to, the names of artists, and the titles of records and tracks). You can (and should) organize your music into a tree of Artists/Records/Tracks, thereby making life easier than with the all-in-one Winamp/XMMS playlist. Importing file metadata (ID3v1, ID3v2 tags, Ogg Xiph comments, APE metadata) into the Music Store as well as getting track names from a CDDB/FreeDB database is supported.

Anche chi è a digiuno di lingua inglese potrà capire come ci sia dl buono del codice di questo progetto che in questo periodo è stato rilasciato in versione 0.9beta9.1.

Sicuramente da migliorare l’interfaccia grafica che, a mio modesto parere, risulta disordinata e dispersiva; ottima l’idea dei pannelli diversi per ogni funzione ma sicuramente avrei preferito un sistema di gestione centralizzata degli stessi.

Cosa invece lodevole è il pannello di setting del software che, oltre ad essere ben strutturato ed ordinato, presenta una infinità di opzioni che faranno la felicità dei power user o degli audiofili più esigenti.

Link

Ciao a tutti.