Audacious 3.8 released

September 21, 2016

Audacious 3.8 was released on September 21, 2016. Download it here.

What’s new

With this version, it is finally possible to run multiple instances of Audacious (#635). Instances are numbered and can be started with audacious -2, audacious -3, and so on; once running, they can be controlled with audtool -2 <command>, audtool -3 <command>, and so on. Each instance remembers its own configuration.

Support for Windows has been improved:

There is a new installer using NSIS, based on work by Carlo Bramini (#342).
The user interface handles high-resolution displays better and no longer appears blurred due to scaling.
Audio output now uses the native waveOut API, allowing higher bit depths, lower latency, and better integration with the system volume control.

New audtool commands have been added:

Enable/disable stream recording (#594)
Enable/disable any plugin: effects, visualizations, etc. (#638)

Cuesheet support is more seamless, with the following fixes:

More robust logic to prevent adding duplicate entries (#630)
Display artist correctly for cuesheets with only a single PERFORMER line (#644)
Add audio files normally if cuesheet support is disabled (#650)
Track lengths correctly account for pregap with libcue 2.0 or later (#651)

Róbert Čerňanský contributed a new plugin to browse music on an Ampache server. Most of the implementation resides in a separate support library, available here.

Other new features:

Folders can be added from various URI protocols (ftp, mtp, etc.) via GIO (#503)
Audio effects and equalization can optionally be applied to a stream recording (#592)
Search results can be added to the playlist using drag and drop (#621)
Option to display MMM:SS instead of H:MM:SS (#631)
Automatic selection of the best available output bit depth
Album artist support for FLAC and Vorbis files (read-write)
Support for the freedesktop.org startup notification protocol

Existing features ported to the Qt interface:

Scrobbler setup dialog (#656)
Context (right-click) menu in the playlist
Copy-and-paste of playlist entries
“Open Containing Folder” command
Desktop notifications and file deletion (via the appropriate plugins)
Access to the full set of FileWriter options

Bugs fixed since 3.7.2

Silenced an error message at the end of some MP3 files (#628)
Fixed various problems seeking within a PSF file (#649)
Resolved build errors when cross-compiling (#652, #653).
Fixed undefined behavior detected by -fsanitize=undefined compiler flag
Silenced a “no such property” warning with older GTK+ versions

Bugs fixed since 3.8-beta1

Controlling multiple instances with audtool now works on Windows (#655)
Primary instance can be closed and reopened without closing other instances
Fixed 100% CPU usage when connection to PulseAudio server is lost

Bugs fixed since 3.8-beta2

Long URLs in error messages no longer cause the window to extend offscreen (#662)

Other notable changes

Plugins from 3.7.x or earlier will need to be rebuilt for 3.8. Some plugins may require source code updates as well. In particular, input plugins are now required to provide a combined read_tag() function, rather than separate read_tuple() and read_image().
The ./configure script for audacious-plugins has been cleaned up, and is now better about reporting unmet plugin dependencies.

Known issues

Drag-and-drop of playlist entries has not yet been implemented in the Qt interface (#484).