aqualung - Man Page

Music player for GNU/Linux

Synopsis

aqualung --help

aqualung --version

Aqualung is an advanced music player originally targeted at the GNU/Linux operating system, today also running on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Microsoft Windows. It plays audio CDs, internet radio streams and podcasts as well as soundfiles in just about any audio format and has the feature of inserting no gaps between adjacent tracks. It also supports high quality sample rate conversion between the file and the output device, when necessary.

Audio CDs can be played back and ripped 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.), as well as files encoded with FLAC (the Free Lossless Audio Codec), Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, MPEG Audio (including the infamous MP3 format), MOD audio formats (MOD, S3M, XM, IT, etc.), Musepack and Monkey's Audio Codec are supported. Numerous formats and codecs are also supported via the FFmpeg project, including AC3, AAC, WMA, WavPack and the soundtrack of many video formats. There is also a native (non-FFmpeg) WavPack decoder. The program can play the music through OSS, ALSA, sndio, PulseAudio, the JACK Audio Connection Kit, or even using the Win32 Sound API (available only under Cygwin or native Win32). Depending on the compile-time options, not all file formats and output drivers may be usable in a particular build. Type aqualung -v to get a list of all the compiled-in features.

Aqualung supports the LADSPA 1.1 plugin standard. You can use any suitable plugin to enhance the music you are listening to.

Other features of the program are: tabbed playlist, internally working volume and balance controls (not touching the soundcard mixer), multiple skin support, random seeking during playback, track repeat, list repeat and shuffle mode (besides normal playback). In track repeat mode the looping range is adjustable. 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. Aqualung has the ability to display and edit Ogg Xiph comments, ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE tags, as well as FLAC picture frames found in files that support them. See the section about metadata support for full reference.

The method of assembling the title string of a track is programmable (via a user-provided Lua function) and can include nearly any metadata item or audio file attribute. See the documentation of the Lua extension file config setting for full reference.

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.

In addition to all this, Aqualung provides a so-called 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 trees 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. For audio CDs, CD-Text retrieval is also implemented.

Please refer to the documentation available at the homepage for a detailed description of features, usage tips and troubleshooting issues. This manual page is merely an abstract from the User's Manual, and documents only the command line interface of the program for quick reference.

Options

Normally you should be able to start Aqualung without any options. This case the output device will be selected by probing for a usable driver (in order of JACK, PulseAudio, ALSA, OSS) with default parameters.

If no driver could be started with default parameters, or you want to explicitly choose a suitable output configuration, you have to tell the program which output device to use. This is possible with the -o (--output) option. There are specific optional parameters for all five output drivers. You can also specify which sample rate converter you want to use, or request a list of available converters. You may also control another instance of the program remotely, or add files to the Playlist.

General options
-D, --disk-realtime: Try to use realtime (SCHED_FIFO) scheduling for disk thread, a background worker thread doing file decoding and sample rate conversion. Try this (and optionally -Y) if you experience short audio dropouts caused by other programs (e.g. web browser loading a complex page).
-Y, --disk-priority <int>: When running -D, set scheduler priority to <int> (defaults to 1).
Options relevant to ALSA output
-d, --device <name>: Set the output device (defaults to 'default').
-r, --rate <int>: Set the output sample rate.
-b, --buffer-size <int>: Set the ALSA output buffer size (in frames).
-R, --realtime: Try to use realtime (SCHED_FIFO) scheduling for ALSA output thread.
-P, --priority <int>: When running --realtime, set scheduler priority to <int> (default is 1 when -R is used).
Options relevant to OSS output
-d, --device <name>: Set the output device (defaults to /dev/audio on OpenBSD, /dev/dsp on other Unices).
-r, --rate <int>: Set the output sample rate.
-R, --realtime: Try to use realtime (SCHED_FIFO) scheduling for OSS output thread.
-P, --priority <int>: When running --realtime, set scheduler priority to <int> (default is 1 when -R is used).
Options relevant to JACK output
-a[<port_L>,<port_R>],: --auto[=<port_L>,<port_R>]
Auto-connect output ports to given JACK ports (defaults to first two hardware playback ports).
-c, --client <name>: Set client name (needed if you want to run multiple instances of the program).

Note that in the case when JACK output has been selected as part of the automatic output device detection, the -a option is implicitly applied.

Options relevant to PulseAudio and sndio output
-r, --rate <int>: Set the output sample rate.
-R, --realtime: Try to use realtime (SCHED_FIFO) scheduling for sndio output thread.
-P, --priority <int>: When running --realtime, set scheduler priority to <int> (default is 1 when -R is used).
Options relevant to Win32 output
-r, --rate <int>: Set the output sample rate.
Options relevant to the Sample Rate Converter
-s[<int>], --srctype[=<int>]: Choose the SRC type, or print the list of available types if no number given. The default is SRC type 4 (Linear Interpolator).

Options for remote cue control

Note that remote controlling of instances is only possible if the instance you want to send a command to is running as the same user as you are when you issue the remote command.

-N, --session <int>: Specify the instance number to send the remote command to. Instances are numbered on a per user basis, starting with 0. Except for the zero-th instance (started first), the instance number is displayed in the title bar of the main window (e.g.: `Aqualung.3'). If you don't use this option, the following options will control the zero-th instance by default, except for -L which defaults to the present instance (so as to be able to start playback immediately from the command line).
-B, --back: Jump to previous track.
-F, --fwd: Jump to next track.
-L, --play: Start playing.
-U, --pause: Pause playback, or resume if already paused.
-T, --stop: Stop playback.
-V, --volume [m|M]|[=]<val>: Adjust the volume. m/M means mute; if = is present, the remote instance's volume control will be set to the value specified, otherwise, the volume will be adjusted by the supplied (signed) value. The values are in dB units.
-Q, --quit: Terminate remote instance.

Options for file loading

You may specify filenames on the command line. These may be ordinary soundfiles playable by Aqualung, directories, or playlist files you saved earlier. The program will decide if a file is a playlist, and add its contents accordingly. In addition to Aqualung's native (XML) playlist format, the program will load M3U and PLS playlists whenever possible.

If you used the --session option (see above), the files will be sent to the Aqualung instance you specified. Otherwise a new instance will start up with the files you specified. Note that if you enabled the Save and restore the Playlist on exit/startup option in the Settings dialog, the files you specify will be loaded after the automatically loaded ones.

-E, --enqueue

Enqueue added files to the Playlist instead of loading them (which removes the previous contents of the Playlist). Use this if you want to keep the existing items in the Playlist.

-t[<name>], --tab[=<name>]

Specify target tab for file loading (either remotely using the --session option, or at startup). If --tab is used without the name parameter, the files will be added to a new (untitled) tab. If a name is supplied, Aqualung will check whether a tab with that name already exists. If so, the files will be loaded (or enqueued if you used -E) to that tab. If no such tab exists, one with that name will be created, and the content goes there.

Options for changing state of Playlist/Music Store windows

-l [yes|no], --show-pl=[yes|no]

Show/hide Playlist window.

-m [yes|no], --show-ms=[yes|no]

Show/hide Music Store window.

Examples

    $ aqualung -s3 -o alsa -R -r 48000 -d plughw:0,0
    $ aqualung --srctype=1 --output oss --rate 96000
    $ aqualung -o jack --auto=system:playback_17,system:playback_18
    $ aqualung -o jack -a -E --tab="Led Zeppelin" `find ./ledzeppelin/ -name '*.flac'`

Files

Here is a list of files that Aqualung creates, reads and relies on.

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aqualung/: Directory containing user settings. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is the user-specific directory for application configuration information according to the XDG Base Directory Specification. It is most likely equivalent to ~/.config, so the following config files (except the last one, which resides in a system-wide location) are usually found under $HOME/.config/aqualung/
Note: earlier versions of Aqualung kept these per-user configuration files in ~/.aqualung. This legacy setup is recognized and silently migrated to the XDG-conformant layout.
config.xml: GUI (skin, window size/position, etc.) and other settings.
plugin.xml: List of running plugins and all their settings.
playlist.xml: Automatically saved and restored playlist (if you enable this feature).
<skin-name>: Locally available skin <skin-name> (useful for skin development).
${prefix}/share/aqualung/skin: System-wide skin directory.

Environment

Aqualung obeys two environment variables concerning LADSPA plugins.

LADSPA_PATH: Colon-separated list of paths to search for LADSPA plugin .so files.
LADSPA_RDF_PATH: Colon-separated list of paths to RDF metadata files about these plugins.

When any of these is not specified, the program will use sensible defaults and look in the obvious places.

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