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Aqualung User's Manual

1. V volume m M lt val gt 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 3 6 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 lt name gt tab lt name gt 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
2. WXXX comments COMM relative volume adjustment 2 RVA2 and attached picture APIC frames are supported Some ID3v2 3 frames that have been discontinued in ID3v2 4 are supported by reading and converting them to other functionally equivalent frames TDAT TIME TRDA and TYER are treated as TDRC and TORY is treated as TDOR Note that the RVAD frame in ID3v2 3 is not supported 6 4 4 APE APEvl and APEv2 amp tags are supported with the restriction that the tag MUST be located at the end of the file possibly before an ID3v1 tag Standard items amp are supported as well as ReplayGain related frames and picture frames which are by convention binary items identified by a key starting with Cover Art followed by the picture type definition in brackets This is compatible with most existing tagging software 6 4 5 Ogg Xiph comments Ogg Xiph comments also known as Ogg Vorbis comments are supported according to the recommended field names in the Vorbis format spec Ef In addition to this COMMENT DISC and ReplayGain related fields are also supported 6 4 6 FLAC pictures In FLAC files there may be an Ogg Xiph comment block along with separate picture blocks that contain one embedded picture each This tag is Aqualung s pseudo tag for referring to the set of picture blocks in a FLAC file so the only frame you can add to this tag is the Attached picture 6 4 7 Musepack ReplayGain data In Musepack SV7 amp stre
3. e Remove older items Aqualung will automatically remove files that are older than the given number of days If a feed offers files for download that are older than this limit they won t even be downloaded Note that if a feed incorrectly specifies the date of the items it may happen that no files are downloaded due to this limit if so turn it off and update again e Maximum space to use the downloaded files will not occupy more space than specified by this option If some files need to be deleted due to limit constraints the oldest one will be removed first to keep fresh material available as long as possible Once you have subscribed to a feed you can edit the check interval and limit settings using the Edit feed menu item New feeds are appended to the Podcasts store They can be reordered later using the Reorder feeds menu item of the Podcasts store There is a check menu item called Automatically update feeds in the Podcasts store popup menu to globally enable disable automatic feed updates for all feeds If unchecked the Edit Feed dialog will show a note about this option being disabled instead of the feed s own check interval When a feed is being updated its title is changed to indicate how many new files are to be downloaded and shows the completion ratio as well You can abort an update process by clicking the Abort ongoing update right click menu item of the feed in question which is naturally available
4. Choosing Rip CD from the popup menu will bring up a dialog with several options broken into notebook pages The Source page is for selecting the tracks to be ripped and specifying the artist record and track names If the CDDB lookup was successful these fields are initialized appropriately On the Output page you can select the directory where to put the audio files and optionally the music store to which you would like to add the ripped CD The destination directory must be empty it is best to create a fresh new directory each time you rip a CD Only music stores with write permission are offered so you might not see all of them The desired file encoding format can also be selected along with settings concerning quality such as compression level or bitrate The supported destination formats are WAV FLAC Ogg Vorbis and MP3 There is also an option to set whether the files should be tagged with metadata WAV does not have a tagging mechanism Other formats are tagged according to their native tagging mechanism CD Ripping always happens with maximum available speed and with error correction modes manually set before every run on the last page titled Paranoia Here you can basically choose between safe and slow ripping and faster but more insecure operation The latter might be useful if you know by experience that your equipment is reliable and the CD you are about to rip is not scratched or dirty Even so it is probably a good idea to us
5. On the Settings Music Store page you can specify several database files whose content is intended to appear in your Music Store If a given file is unavailable the corresponding store item will be missing from the Music Store If the file is readonly you can play the music but you won t be allowed to change add edit remove etc the items in the store Finally if you have write permission on the file you will be allowed to change the items The order in which the stores appear in the Music Store is the order of the corresponding database files in the list The list can be reordered via drag amp drop 4 3 5 Handling file metadata The program can read and write all sorts of metadata normally referred to as tags in everyday speech embedded in the audio files themselves To see such metadata for a particular track you will utilize the File info dialog accessible from the Music Store right click popup menus for Tracks or press i and the Playlist right click popup menu for Playlist entries or press i When you open the File info dialog from the Music Store you will find buttons to the right of every metadata field that was read from the file unless the store is readonly By pressing these buttons the associated data will be imported into the corresponding field of the relevant Track For metadata fields Aqualung User s Manual 12 that don t have a corresponding field in the Music Store you can append th
6. add_hook function with a string and a function The string is the type of hook you are adding and the function is the function to call when the related event occurs You can have multiple hook functions added to the same hook type and they will be executed in order of addition Hook 1 track_change The track_change hooks are called whenever a new track starts playing They are not called until after the current file has been changed to the new file Inside this hook you can call the m and i playlist formatting functions to access the metadata of the newly loaded file add_hook track_change function print File current_file Artist m artist end Prints the filename and artist of the new file Aqualung User s Manual 33 Hook 2 track position change The track position change hooks are called whenever the scale position of the current track changes Generally it is called a few times a second This can be used to keep track of aqualung s current position in the file and is passed a floating point argument of the percent complete Note that tracks that do not have a set number of samples such as internet radio streams will not have this hook called when they are playing add_hook track_position_change function print current_file oe string format 0 2 4 current_file_percent_complete end Prints the filename and percent complete of the currently playing file 9 4 Custom Pl
7. but if you want to you would focus on Aqualung s main window hit Ctrl z then Ctrl q Example 2 Testing all modifier keys add_main_keybinding b function print b received end add_main_keybinding alt b function print alt b received end add_main_keybinding control b function print control b received end add_main_keybinding super b function print super b received end add_main_keybinding control alt b function print control alt b received end add_main_keybinding super alt b function print super alt b received end add_main_keybinding super control b function print super control b received end add_main_keybinding super control alt b function print super control alt b received end add_main_keybinding B function print B received end add_main_keybinding alt B function print alt B received end add_main_keybinding control B function print control B received end add_main_keybinding super B function print super B received end add_main_keybinding control alt B function print control alt B received end add_main_keybinding super alt B function print super alt B received end add_main_keybinding super control B function print super control B received end add_main_keybinding super control alt B function print super control alt B received end This shows all of the possible combinations of modifier keys for a
8. return end end File name for path function basename path if string find path then return string sub path string len path string find string reverse path 2 else return path end end The album name from the metadata or the directory name of the file if not present function album_or_dir local album m album if album then album basename dirname i filename end return album end The title from the metadata or the base name of the file if not present function title_or_file local title m title if title then local file basename i filename if not string match file d then title file end end return title end If the field exists in the metadata format it using the format_string function formatif field format_string if field then field string format format_string field end return field Aqualung User s Manual 31 end A string indicating the frequency in Hz or the empty string if the frequency is 44100 function freq local hz string format i i sample_rate if hz 44100 then hz else hz formatif hz sHz end return hz end A string indicating the number of channels unless the number of channels is 2 stereo function chan local m string format i i channels if m 2 then m un elseif m 1 then m MONO else m formatif
9. 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 3 10 Files Here is a list of files that Aqualung creates reads and relies on aqualung Directory containing user settings aqualung config xml GUI skin window size position etc and other settings aqualung plugin xml1 List of running plugins and all their settings aqualung playlist xml Automatically saved and restored playlist if you enable this feature aqualung lt skin name gt Locally available skin lt skin name gt useful for skin development prefix share aqualung skin System wide skin directory 4 Graphical Interface 4 1 Main Window You can control most of the program from this window The cue controls in the bottom left corner are fairly obvious You can drag the large slider in the middle for seeking There are two smaller sliders above that the left one is for adjusting the volume and the right one for adjusting the balance Above these there are two horizontal text areas showing information about the currently playing track and input output parameters such as sample rate mono stereo bitrate output driver e g OSS ALSA JACK etc The
10. Lua interpreter and create a new Lua intepreter To close the existing Lua interpreter and immediately reopen it with the same extension file use the Reload Lua interpreter setting Note that whenever the Lua interpreter is closed all Lua internal state is lost Aqualung User s Manual 29 9 2 Programmable Title Format By specifying a function named playlist_title in your Lua extension file which should accept no arguments and should return a string you can override the default title formatting specified by the Title format setting Similarly by specifying a function named application_title with the same API you have the application window s title set separately from the playlist title If you would like the application title and playlist title to be the same you can have your application_title function just call playlist_title Aqualung defines two functions for you to use to get data to use in the title format m and i m stands for metadata and i stands for file info The m function is used to get metadata from file tags while the i function is used to get information about the file itself such as the length bitrate and number of channels If there are multiple metadata entries such as multiple artists m will return them as a single string separated with comma If there is no metadata entry m will return the empty string If you ask for a metadata or
11. OE Awe ew ee ee es 17 5 4 2 Regular expressions canas a kga ee 17 5 4 3 Predefined transformations 0 002 17 SAA Capitalization 0 2 22 sake le ee eRe A WR OD EAR eee BO 17 Aqualung User s Manual 2 6 Metadata support 18 61 Mantial diting e 3 46 lema os ee ed a ee Se A Se oe w 18 6 2 Mass taggihg ups a eee ee e Re eS 18 6 3 Metadata related behavior 0 0 2 19 6 3 1 Gonfiguration s v sas a ee yee a ee a ee EA ee a 19 6 3 2 Precedence of metadata information 0 0002 e eee 19 6 3 3 ReplayGainand RVA 00000 ee ee 19 6 3 4 Metadata transfer when exporting 0 000 000 00000 20 6 4 Overview of supported metadata formats 2 2 0 a e 20 6 4 1 Metadata support Matrix 20 GA IDSVL ane are wee She tba daa a de eee se a tea Ras 20 6 4 3 ID3V2 ama ica a ER Oe eRe EL ERE A Raa 21 O44 APE Bink 6 det thee A OEE SS EOE NEE Re he bond LS 21 6 4 5 Ogg Xiph comments 2 0 ee 21 6 4 6 FLAC pictures 21 6 4 7 Musepack ReplayGain data 000 a 21 6 4 8 Generic StreamMetadata 0 0000 ee 21 6 4 9 MPEG StreamMetadata 2 0 0 000 0 22 6410 MOD Informatio r du aan ke RAE bate we A Bie So ee Pe Deas 22 Settings 22 Tal General 20th ad dha EB EOS BOE SG eed ba Se A 22 TLI Main Window sx see s osas oe SERRE eG a Hs 22 7 1 2 Title Format 22 7 1 3 Luaextension file p bhad burse ap a ega ee ee 23 lA CSysttay e s kee ars e A a a a
12. This is enforced by a drop down menu in the metadata editor GUI Aqualung User s Manual 21 6 4 3 ID3v2 ID3v2 tags are supported with the restriction that the tag MUST be at the beginning of the file Tag versions before ID3v2 3 are considered obsolete and not supported Support for ID3v2 3 tags http id3 org id3v2 3 0 amp is read only meaning that they are parsed but converted to ID3v2 4 when ever saved back to file ID3v2 4 tags http id3 org id3v2 4 0 structure amp are supported in both read and write mode ID3v2 4 tags are always written using UTF 8 as the string encoding of non ASCII text data and unconditionally employing unsynchronisation on all frames Extended headers are neither parsed nor written Padding is added when creating a new file via CD ripping or file export or rewriting a tag that does not fit in its earlier space e g when adding a picture frame which is usually larger than the remaining padding thus mandating the re writing of the whole file In these cases the policy for determining the amount of padding is that the size of the tag should be an integer multiple of 2K and the added padding should be between 2K and 4K Not every frame defined by the ID3v2 standards is implemented however the commonly used subset of the frames is available In particular all text information frames T including User defined text frame TXXX URL link frames W including User defined URL link frame
13. be pasted or dropped inside another album node 4 3 Music Store 4 3 1 Overview The Music Store is a simple database of all your music The central philosophy of this program is that you have a large storage ideally an entire hard drive or a separate partition to store all your music files This is not necessary for the program to work The audio files can be scattered around your system as long as you have read permissions to them However it is strongly recommended that you devote a separate directory for all the music for example music would be a convenient place to store files that are owned by root but readable by all users Moreover you can maintain several collections on different machines this way and share them with other users via NFS while keeping a probably smaller collection on your local hard drive In these central directories create subdirectories for each artist you have CDs from The directory names do not have to contain the exact names you can for example create music ledzep for Led Zeppelin music crimson for King Crimson music hendrix for Jimi Hendrix and so on In these directories create subdirectories for each CD you have Once again the directory names for the records do not need to fully contain the record titles they can be short and without spaces and special characters Aqualung User s Manual 11 Into the directories of records you should rip the CD using the built in ripper of Aqualung taggin
14. 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 ATFF 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 Monkeys 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 APT 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
15. have to understand and use the RVA system in order to make use of this The RVA system relies on pre stored loudness measurements of files which Aqualung normally does by itself by selecting the Calculate volume option from the popup menus However for files already containing ReplayGain or RVA information it is possible to use that as the basis of volume adjustment One way of doing this is importing the ReplayGain or RVA frame to the Music Store as manual RVA using the File info dialog opened from the Music Store In this case the stored value is editable via the Edit track popup menu item where you can also specify such a value manually if needed In case there is no manual RVA value stored for the file the RVA system will see if there is a previously calculated loudness value stored for this track If yes this will be the basis of a volume adjustment calculation which is controlled by Settings Playback RVA options However if the RVA system is enabled and neither manual RVA nor loudness measurement is available Aqualung looks for ReplayGain or RVA information in the file metadata If such information is found it is used in the same way as manual RVA so the track s playback gain will be adjusted by exactly the specified amount There is an important difference between manual RVA data coming from a metadata tag or specified directly by the user and loudness values calculated by Aqualung The former
16. it default so drag amp drop and adding via keyboard shortcut will use this mode automatically Aqualung supports playlist tabs which allow you to have multiple playlists for your music at the same time very similarly to multiple tabbed browsing in Firefox Creating new tabs is possible via CTRL T in the Playlist window double clicking on the tab bar or using the right click context menu of the tab labels This context menu can also be used to rename tabs close other tabs or undo closing Another trick is that middle clicking on an item in the Music Store adds the content to a new playlist tab which will be named after the middle clicked element by default Closing a tab has several ways clicking the close button located on each tab middle clicking on a tab using the tab context menu or by pressing CTRL W in the Playlist window Undo close tab is possible until you quit Aqualung Tabs can be reordered via drag amp drop The contents of the Playlist can be saved and restored automatically when the program exits and starts up and or periodically with adjustable interval Whether this should be done is a configuration option covered later In addition to this you can save the Playlist manually at any time or load a previously saved playlist file To do this right click in the Playlist area which will bring up a popup menu with these features The Playlist is saved as an XML file unless you specify a filename ending in m3u in which ca
17. only during updates 4 4 JACK Port Setup If you use JACK output you need this dialog to route the outputs of the program somewhere most likely to the playback ports representing the soundcard driver If you want the outputs to be connected automatically to the first two hardware playback devices use the a or auto command line option On the left each output port has a list of its current connections By clicking on any list item that connection will be removed The Clear connections button removes all connections from the output ports The notebook on the right has a page for all client programs and hardware devices available to the JACK server Naturally only those are shown which are data sinks hardware playback devices or inputs of JACK clients thus connectable to outputs which are data sources By selecting a notebook page you will see a list of that client s input ports Clicking on a list item connects the port to the currently selected Aqualung output port which has a blue header You can change the selected output port by clicking on the unselected grey list header When you add connections to the output ports the selection alters between the two outputs so connecting both outputs is very fast and easy If you start up another JACK client while the dialog is open you may press the Rescan button to make it appear in the notebook Closing and re opening the dialog has the same effect since JACK ports are re read and a new
18. s Manual 26 8 Keyboard shortcuts 8 1 Main window key action z Z y Y comma jump to previous track x X p P play c C SPACE pause v V s S stop CTRL S stop after current song toggle b B period jump to next track left arrow jump seek backwards in current track right arrow jump seek forward in current track BACKSPACE restart current track volume down 7 volume up ALT balance towards left ALT balance towards right ALT S show hide Music Store ALT L show hide Playlist ALT X show hide LADSPA patch builder 1 toggle track repeat 2 toggle repeat all 3 toggle shuffle lt adjust start of loop range to current playing position gt adjust end of loop range to current playing position 1 1 bring up the File Info dialog for currently played track o O show Settings k K show Skin Chooser ESC hide all windows works only with systray support CTRL Q quit Aqualung Aqualung User s Manual 27 8 2 Playlist key action up down arrow navigation in the list ENTER double click start playback of the selected or double clicked track or jump to it if already playing a A scroll list to show active track w W collapse all nodes grave expand collapse selected node insert add files SHIFT insert add directory CTRL A selec
19. that you can apply LADSPA plugins to the music You can use the equalizer of your choice instead of a built in one along with other plugins You can process your sound with Aqualung in ways that the author of this program never thought of A recommended set is TAP plugins Ef Of course faithful reproduction of music does not require or permit pervasive signal processing since that is not the purpose of such activity However the technology is at your disposal and it s up to you to use or misuse it It may be necessary to adapt your listening gear to the acoustic environment using small amounts of equalization preferably in a subtractive manner In addition to this I also like to spice my tracks with a small amount of tubewarmth to feel that warm tube sound even with my transistor amplifiers and to bring out even the finest details of the music The plugin chain you build is automatically saved and restored so once you get it right for your listening environment you should rarely need to touch it Some tricks concerning the LADSPA patch builder Aqualung User s Manual 15 e Multiple plugins can be selected from the available plugins list and added at once by clicking on the Add button or pressing a or A e A single plugin can be added immediately by double clicking it in the available plugins list e Plugins in the running list can be un bypassed with the middle mouse button e The configuration window of the running pl
20. will be displayed in the comment pane It is also shown in the File Info dialog as well as the main window during the playback of a track from this album Clicking the image will show a zoomed version of the cover When playing files or viewing them in the File info dialog embedded pictures are also used for cover display If an embedded picture frame is found in file metadata it is displayed instead of any separate image file If there is more than one embedded picture in the file the first one is used In these cases no separate image file is used so the embedded image found in file metadata is displayed regardless of any separate image in the audio file s directory There are some global options to set here as well which should be quite obvious to use 7 2 Playlist The Playlist is embedded in the Main window by default to achieve a more compact look Turn it off to put the Playlist into a separate window You can set whether to use Album mode by default when adding songs from Music Store to the Playlist Regardless of this setting you can always add tracks without using Album mode by using the Add to playlist popup menu in Music Store Aqualung User s Manual 24 Settings concerning playlist tabs can be made too You can control whether to have close buttons on playlist tabs If you don t want the tab bar to be hidden when only one tab is open uncheck the Always show the tab bar item The option to save restore the Playlist whe
21. A ee DS 23 AD Miscellaneous e sor sse crios A y oe 23 T2 Playlist sar aia a wes a See A AA Se r e 23 MES MusiC OLOTE seo A Bs ata E RR Le a rc ee dia na 24 TA DSP ss o de os ad ad a a ED be eae Rae 4 24 To Playback RVA carreteira A we Ee eae Ga le dd ee Ad dd 24 T6 Metadata eos He corran e aa a a a a EG bw S 24 Tel CODA s na iis as DRA A AR AAA a RARE SG 24 TS CDDB 4 4 6 2s deh a OM GR a eee a a a a De 25 AI a p sara Bae a aei i EEE REM ELAR A 25 TIO Appearance lt 0 a 4 be ees a ad ho ee be Ye oe DB eS 25 Keyboard shortcuts 26 8 1 Main WindoW sS mos 2 h0045 4 eR ADE SE HEE ee ee a ae ee a 26 8 2 Playlist 2 25 eo ee oh AA oS we da eee bh ea a 27 8 3 Music Store a o stn ee a ee SE A ee oe Gee a we gO Be ee G 28 Extending Aqualung 28 9 1 Introductioti cuore rss ERS OS ERA EEG 28 9 2 Programmable Title Format a 29 9 3 Hooking into Aqualung Events e 32 9 4 Custom Playlist Menu Commands 0 00000 eee ee 33 9 5 Custom Remote Commands 0 a ee 33 9 6 Custom Keybindings e sa i sa p RR See RR ER Re Ld 34 9 7 Lua Extension API methods 0000000 ee 35 Aqualung User s Manual 3 1 Introduction 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
22. Aqualung Music Player for GNU Linux June 3 2014 User s Manual Copyright 2006 2010 Peter Szilagyi Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation Aqualung User s Manual 1 Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Quick Start Guide 3 2 1 Getting Aqualung 2644444444 408 eR REE a ee ee eee ee 3 2 2 Starting the program for the first time 2 0 0 0 0 e e 4 2 3 Setting up a Music Store e 4 2 4 Playing and ripping an Audio CD riy EnaA ee ee ee 5 3 Command Line Interface 5 Sel Invocation 64 i460 ss cra ra A as dar 5 3 2 General options sop a se aea E PF aS daa aa eh het eae ADE a 5 3 3 Output specific options eea 5 3 3 1 Options relevant to ALSA OutpUb 00000022 2 eee 5 3 3 2 Options relevant to OSS output 2 ee 6 3 3 3 Options relevant to JACK output 20 0002 00040 6 3 3 4 Options relevant to PulseAudio and sndio output 6 3 3 5 Options relevant to Win32 output e 6 3 4 Options relevant to the Sample Rate Converter 0 0 000000008 6 3 5 Options for remote cue control 2 2 6 3 6 Options for file loading s ss s a aii a a saa a a a a le i ad A a e A 7 3 6 1 Setting up programs to use Aqualung as a soundfile handler 7 3 7 Options for changing s
23. FLAC containing Ogg Vorbis comments and two FLAC picture frames to MP3 will result in an MP3 with an ID3v2 having the respective text frames and two APIC frames for the pictures When assembling the metadata written to the output file the information from the Music Store or Playlist Title Artist Album Year Track number will be used in case the source metadata does not contain the appropriate frames 6 4 Overview of supported metadata formats 6 4 1 Metadata support matrix This table shows what tag types are supported for which audio formats Formats for which no metadata support is present are omitted al 8 za g 8 a E E 9 y 2 3 Oo E el el oo eg a 5 in sl s a a S S 2 3 E gt a 2 1812813 A A A 60 13 D A lt O Er laa FLAC R W R W Ogg Vorbis R W Ogg Vorbis stream R R MPEG Audio R W R W R W MPEG Audio stream RIR MOD Audio R Musepack R W R Monkey s Audio R W WavPack R W 6 4 2 ID3v1 ID3v1 and ID3v1 1 http www id3 org ID3v1 amp are fully supported The difference between the two is the presence or absence of a separate Track Number field which was added in ID3v1 1 Aqualung automatically parses the tag choosing the right version When writing the tag it is written as ID3v1 1 if a Track Number frame is present and written as ID3v1 otherwise The Genre field has a fixed set of possible contents in ID3v1 and ID3v1 1
24. The moral is if you want it loud turn up your external amp You can also consider using RVA if the volume level of your tracks tends to vary in a wide range see this section for details On a related note another thing to watch out for is LADSPA plugins in case you use them It is very common that the signal level leaving a plugin is greater than the signal level the plugin gets on its input So it is best to leave a few dB of headroom if you do that A very typical case is boosting some frequency bands a few dB with an EQ plugin You should decrease the overall volume level with as much dB as the largest boost or even more or you are risking that the signal will get chopped causing bad distortion Alternatively apply this limiter plugin amp as the last one in the processing chain but only if you know what you are doing Right clicking almost anywhere in the window will bring up a menu that allows access to the Settings dialog the Skin Chooser the JACK Port Setup dialog present only when running the program with JACK output and the About box The latter may be useful to see which features have been compiled into the program If you haven t read the page about compiling amp yet the configuration of the program can be adapted so as not to require certain libraries when compiling and not provide certain features accordingly 4 2 Playlist The Playlist normally receives its contents from the Music Store However you can pu
25. 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 3 6 1 Setting up programs to use Aqualung as a soundfile handler It is possible to set up a host program such as a browser file manager etc to use Aqualung for opening soundfiles To do this a command line with the following properties should be used e if an Aqualung instance is already running send the file s to that instance e if no instance is running start up a new instance e either case start playing the file s immediately after loading them One solution to this is to use aqualung NO E L t File Manager s where s is one or more filenames It should be noted that the file associations the mechanism of knowing which files to open via Aqualung is completely within the scope of the host program 3 7 Options for changing state of Playlist Music Store windows 1 yes no show pl yes no Show hide Playlist window m yes no show ms yes no Show hide Music Store window 3 8 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 Aqualung User s Manual 8 3 9
26. a sed s regexp replacement g command The regexp must not match the empty string the only exception is leaving the regexp entry empty which disables the whole regexp module The replacement is allowed to be empty in which case the matched parts are deleted The replacement may also contain the special escapes 1 through 9 to refer to the corresponding matching sub expressions in the regexp See sed 1 and grep 1 for more information on sed substitution and regexp syntax There is a sandbox where you can enter a string and see how it would be transformed providing a safe environment for experiments 5 4 3 Predefined transformations These provide some basic fixes such as removing the extension or leading numbers converting underscores to spaces and trimming leading tailing or multiple spaces You can use them together with the regexp module as well in which case only the replacement will be transformed as expected 5 4 4 Capitalization Finally with this module you can force a capitalization pattern on the string The force case entry is a comma separated list of words or expressions that will be left in the form you entered them An obvious Aqualung User s Manual 18 example is the case of Roman numbers After the standard modules present for artist record and track names there are some category dependent settings For artists and records you can set the source of the sort name field for tracks you can decide whether to import
27. adata is editable Each metadata tag present in the file will be displayed in a separate notebook tab On each tab the information present in a tag is usually organized as a list of frames displayed in a key value fashion The values of each frame are editable mostly by means of a simple text entry but in some cases other widgets such as a drop down menu may also be present The frame itself can be removed by clicking on the frame s rightmost icon displaying a trash can Some frames cannot be removed because their existence is mandated by the corresponding metadata standard for the tag In this case the trash can is greyed out Adding new frames is possible via the drop down box at the bottom of the tab This box contains all possible frames that you can add to the present tag Some frames can only occur once in a tag in this case after adding it once or if a frame of this type is already present in the tag it is no more present in the drop down box Adding and removing whole tags is also supported Just press the trash can icon at the bottom right corner of the tab and the whole tag will be removed Adding a new tag is possible via the drop down box at the bottom of the window This box contains all possible tags you can add to this file This depends on the audio file format and what tags are already present in the file naturally only one instance of a particular tag may exist in a file 6 2 Mass tagging Aqualung supports mass tag
28. ams there may be ReplayGain data in the file not in a metadata tag but in the coded audio data itself Technically it is always present but is only treated as existent when it is nonzero Aqualung displays and has the capability to use this information by referring to it as a Musepack ReplayGain pseudo tag which again is not a proper metadata tag in reality This information is read only 6 4 8 Generic StreamMetadata This is a read only pseudo tag carrying information that was obtained when speaking to the Icecast or SHOUTcast stream server Specifically the relevant HTTP header fields received from the server are saved in this pseudo tag and made available for viewing These currently include the Icy Name Icy Description and Icy Genre fields Aqualung User s Manual 22 6 4 9 MPEG StreamMetadata This is a read only pseudo tag carrying information that was received while listening to an MPEG stream on internet radio via SHOUTcast Ef This information consists of key value pairs and is thus fairly similar to Ogg Xiph comments Usually internet broadcast stations include only a small number of fields but since the field name is included in the transmission there is no restriction on the supported fields 6 4 10 MOD information For files handled by the MOD library some read only information about the file number of channels instruments etc is displayed 7 Settings This dialog is the cont
29. an Ai expression is true if all strings are available whose flag character appears in the expression in question logical AND If the conditional is true the content of the following pair of braces will be inserted otherwise it will be skipped The CONTENT string may contain the flags a r or t as well If you want to insert a literal or P you should write or respectively except for a inside CONTENT and a Y outside CONTENT where they can appear unquoted Of course it is good practice to always escape these characters for the sake of clarity if one needs them literally Everything that is neither a conditional expression nor a flag will be copied verbatim into the result Note that the expression a a is equivalent to a since the flags will only be substituted if the corresponding string is available so there s no need for the extra check An example title format is a ar at r rt t Using this format string one would get the following components in order a artist name if available arlatf if artist AND record OR artist AND track available the string Yor record name if available rt if record AND track available the string Dt track name if available Aqualung User s Manual 23 7 1 3 Lua extension file This section is only available if Aqualung is compiled with Lua extension support If
30. aylist Menu Commands You can add custom playlist menu commands to Aqualung by calling the add_playlist_menu_command function with a string and a function The string is the label of the playlist menu entry and the function is the function to call when the playlist menu entry is clicked You can include s inside the string to create submenus there is currently no support for a to appear inside a label The function should accept 0 arguments Example 1 Exiting Aqualung immediately with an error code add_playlist_menu_command Exit Immediately function os exit 1 end Using this example is not recommended Example 2 Printing selected files to standard output add_playlist_menu_command Print Filenames function for k v in pairs selected_files do print v end end Example 3 Running commands on file names under a Database submenu add_playlist_menu_command Database Add Favorite Tracks function for k v in pairs selected_files do os execute add_favorite_track string gsub v 7 7 end end add_playlist_menu_command Database Remove Favorite Tracks function for k v in pairs selected_files do os execute remove_favorite_track string gsub v 2 PAN end end The string gsub call is for escaping filenames since Lua s os execute sends the string argument to the shell 9 5 Custom Remote Commands You can add custom remote commands t
31. 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 func tion 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 o
32. custom keybinding that rely on the b key Aqualung User s Manual 35 9 7 Lua Extension API methods These are global methods that you can call inside the methods described above in order to get information from Aqualung or change Aqualung s settings or behavior e current_file Returns the filename string of currently playing file or nil if no file is playing e current_file_percent_complete Returns number between 0 and 100 with the percent complete of the current playing file or nil if no file is playing e selected_files Returns an array integer keyed table of selected filenames strings for the current playlist
33. dialog instance is built every time Aqualung User s Manual 14 4 5 Skin Chooser This dialog lets you choose from the available skins at any time All officially supported skins are shipped with Aqualung and installed in the system wide skin directory during make install Skins placed in the local skin directory will only be locally available which is useful for developing new skins or experimenting with the existing ones If there are skins in the system wide directory and the local directory having the same name the local one takes precedence 4 6 System Tray Support When compiled with Systray support Aqualung will place its icon in the system tray notification area and lets all of its windows be closed while still playing music In this mode pressing the upper right X on the main window will not exit the program only hide its windows Clicking on the systray icon with the left mouse button will toggle visibility of the program s windows Clicking with the right button will bring up a popup menu allowing showing hiding the windows basic cueing and quitting Aqualung The systray icon has a tooltip displaying the same text as the main window s title So it s easy to see what track is currently playing and also the Aqualung instance ID in case of more instances 5 Supplemental features 5 1 Exporting files from the Music Store or Playlist It is possible to export files from the Music Store or Playlist to external formats Th
34. e at the left and right end positions the whole song is repeated The looping range can also be selected using keyboard shortcuts When track repeat is enabled and the current song is playing or paused lt will set the start of the looping range to the current playing position gt does the same for the end of the looping range Volume and balance slider tricks e Shift any mouse button sets the volume and balance sliders back to 0 dB and Center position respectively This combination also works for the loop bar in which case the looping range is set to the whole song e Clicking and holding the right mouse button on these sliders shows their position in the big time display without altering the value An additional thing to know about the volume control is that it ranges up to 6 dB This means you can send a bigger signal to the audio device than in the original file With 0 dB corresponding to 100 signal level 6 dB is almost exactly 200 signal level and 4 times signal power as well This means you can overdrive your output device and since clipping will occur at 100 anyway it will cause nasty digital distortion much worse than simple analog overdrive If you have a track with a reasonably low level you can go above 0 dB with the volume control But today most CDs are mastered to keep the average volume level very close to the 0 dB or 100 top and so they will likely distort with as little as 1 dB additional gain
35. e rate R realtime Try to use realtime SCHED_FIFO scheduling for sndio output thread P priority lt int gt When running realtime set scheduler priority to lt int gt default is 1 when R is used 3 3 5 Options relevant to Win32 output r rate lt int gt Set the output sample rate 3 4 Options relevant to the Sample Rate Converter s lt int gt srctype lt int gt Choose the SRC type or print the list of available types if no number given The default is SRC type 4 Linear Interpolator 3 5 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 lt int gt 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 Aqualung User s Manual T U pause Pause playback or resume if already paused T stop Stop playback
36. e the available extra error protection unless you are really in a hurry Aqualung User s Manual 13 It is possible to display information about the inserted disc CD Text or the drive itself general info reading or writing capabilities etc The tray can also be ejected if the driver supports this operation Note that ripping and playing a CD at the same time is impossible for obvious reasons 4 3 8 Podcast support If Aqualung is compiled with podcast support you will have a store called Podcasts in your Music Store All feeds you are subscribed to will show up as nodes under this store Subscriptions can be made using the Subscribe to new feed right click menu of the Podcasts store When you subscribe to a feed you need to enter the URL of the feed and a directory where to put the downloaded files Supported feed formats are all versions of RSS and Atom Aqualung can automatically check for updates and download new files The check interval can be specified in hours with a 0 25 hour resolution The automatic update facility can be disabled for a feed by unchecking the checkbutton before the name of this option There are three different limits that you can apply on a per feed basis All of them are optional and can be turned on off with their respective checkbutton e Maximum number of items the number of downloaded files will never exceed this If necessary Aqualung will delete older files to meet this requirement
37. e whether you want to set the contents of newly added frames on the basis of another existing tag s equivalent frame For example if this option is enabled adding a Title frame to a newly added APE tag will automatically fill it in provided that there is e g an ID3v2 tag in the same file that already has a Title frame If this option is unset newly added fields will be blank The last group of options controls the preferred set of tags in MPEG audio files Because these files can have ID3v1 ID3v2 and APE tags in any combination it is essential to set this to match your policy regarding the tagging of these files These settings affect creating via CD ripping or file export or batch tagging MPEG audio files 6 3 2 Precedence of metadata information Whenever there is a generic request for some information concerning a file e g Who is the artist we do not want to explicitly specify which metadata tag should be used to retrieve the desired piece of data As a consequence all tags present have to be checked However since not all tags are equally capable of storing well formed information think of ID3v1 limitations there should be a preference order in which the different tags are queried The preference order MPEG StreamMeta Generic StreamMeta Musepack ReplayGain data FLAC pictures Ogg Xiph comments APE ID3v2 ID3v1 A IS ea he 6 3 3 ReplayGain and RVA Aqualung is a ReplayGain aware music player You
38. ear but you can use explicit numbering or whatever you like as well If multiple records of an artist have the same year double albums multi CD collections or just multiple studio albums published in the same year you may use e g 1969 1 1969 2 etc to keep them in proper order As for tracks a two digit zero padded decimal numbering would be excellent for the sort key If you added tracks to the records using the aforementioned Auto create tracks from these files feature of the Record add dialog the tracks will be automatically numbered for you this way Last but not least every item has a Comment field that may contain multiple lines of text and is perfectly optional to use for any store artist record or track When you have entered something in this field it will be displayed in the lower area of the Music Store window when the corresponding item is selected in the tree Use this to store miscellaneous data such as birth dates of artists or comments like Recorded live at Royal Albert Hall or Digitized from original LP for records and movement subtitles for tracks that have them 4 3 4 Dealing with multiple stores As mentioned before you may maintain several collections of audio files on several machines Each collection is arranged in an artist record track hierarchy and appears under a store item in the Music Store tree The metadata describing one collection is located in one file on your filesystem
39. eir contents to the Comment field as a catch all solution Please make sure to check out the comprehensive guide to Aqualung s metadata capabilities 4 3 6 CDDB Support Aqualung supports retrieving matches from a CDDB database as well as submitting new records or updating existing ones The features are available by right clicking on a record in the Music Store and choosing the appropriate menu item The CDDB query option starts a query which can last a bit long if there are a lot of matches and displays a dialog with the search results It tends to work even if you have already encoded your audio files in a lossy format If there are multiple matches you can select any of them using the combo box at the top of the dialog The displayed fields are all editable which is useful in case you find no fully acceptable match but want to use one that is almost perfect The track names can be edited by double clicking on the desired track or single clicking on an already selected entry By pressing the OK button the track names of the currently selected lookup results will be propagated into the Music Store The artist name record title and year are not automatically set but can be imported using the Import as Artist Import as Title and Import as Year buttons on the right Record title and year can also be imported as sort keys after you once pressed the corresponding import button Other data category genre and extended data can be appended t
40. er conductor composer publication_right file ean_upc isbn catalog label_code record_date record_location media index related abstract language bibliography introplay bpm encoding_time playlist_delay original_release_time release_time tagging_time encoded_by lyricist filetype involved_people content_group initial_key length musician_credits mood original_album original_filename original_lyricist original_artist file_owner band remixed set_part produced station_name station_owner album_order performer_order title_order software set_subtitle user_text commercial_info legal_info file_website artist_website source_website station_website payment publisher_website user_url vendor rg_loudness track_gain track_peak album_gain album_peak icy_name icy_descr icy_genre rva Here is a complete list of values that the i function accepts filename sample_rate channels bps samples voladj_db voladj_lin stream mono Changing the Lua extension file entry takes effect immediately but does not affect existing titles in the playlist In order to update existing titles in the playlist the Reread file metadata setting should be used 9 3 Hooking into Aqualung Events Aqualung allows you to add hooks to certain events to have extension code executed when those events occur Hooks are added by calling the
41. f 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 2 Quick Start Guide If you d like to get your hands on the program quickly rather than to spend your evening reading the rest of the manual here is the absolute minimum you need to know to successfully use the program So make sure to read this deliberately short chapter and come back for the rest when you have questions while using the program Ultimately you may ask questions on the aqualung friends amp mailing list 2 1 Getting Aqualung It is not hard to get Aqualung up and running on your machine although for beginners the number of compile time options might be intimidating at first The steps you need to take depend on the platform Aqualung User s Manual 4 and operating system you use For detailed information please look at the relevant page amp of the Aqualung website In case you are not used to compiling software yourself you may check whether there is a distribution provided package of Aqualung In
42. file info entry that Aqualung doesn t understand Aqualung will log an error and will fallback to using the standard title formatting code Here are some examples bi 1 Very simple showing basic syntax function playlist_title return m artist mE title 7 C MC album end Results e Yngiew Malmsteen Far Beyond the Sun Rising Force e Greensleeves 2 Simple showing use of conditional formatting function mi field format if field then field string format format field end return field end function dirname path if string find path then return string sub path 1 string len path string find string reverse path else return end end function album local a m album if a then a a mi date s else a dirname i filename end return a end function playlist_title return album mi trackno s mE title end Aqualung User s Manual 30 Results e Rising Force 1984 01 Far Beyond the Sun e irish_music Greensleeves 3 Complex showing quasi columnar output via padding requires a fixed width font for a decent appearance Maximum length of a line in the playlist maxlen 85 Directory name for path function dirname path if string find path then return string sub path 1 string len path string find string reverse path else
43. first trick to learn is that these lines are horizontally draggable with the mouse if the text does not fit in the available visible space However they don t scroll automatically and for a very good reason In the upper left corner you find one bigger and two smaller displays that show track times elapsed time remaining time and total track time The big display also shows the current volume and balance setting when appropriate By clicking in these displays you can rearrange the displays as you want them The following figure shows how the displays switch their contents after clicking into them with the left L or right R mouse button In the bottom right corner there are additional buttons The buttons with the letters display or hide additional windows of the program FX Ladspa Patch Builder MS Music Store PL Playlist Aqualung User s Manual 9 Note that depending on the skin these buttons may come with images instead of the letters above However their functionality does not change The remaining three buttons are to select the playback mode When none of these buttons is depressed playback goes the normal way The buttons are mutually exclusive and select track repeat list repeat or shuffle mode I m sure you can figure out which is which If you select track repeat a loop bar appears above the seek bar with two markers The markers can be dragged to select the looping range When they ar
44. for increased accuracy generally much larger speeds are required to prevent buffer underruns and thus audible drop outs but this is very device specific Most drives let Aqualung know when a CD has been inserted or removed However some drives don t report correctly and thus it may happen that a newly inserted CD remains unnoticed to Aqualung In such cases forcing TOC re read on every drive scan should help Aqualung User s Manual 25 Aqualung can automatically add newly inserted CDs to the Playlist and remove them when the CD is removed from the drive A CD will only be added if the Playlist doesn t already contain any of its tracks The newly added CD will appear at the top of the Playlist but after all CD tracks or albums being in the list Removal from Playlist will happen if the CD is removed from the drive or the user quits Aqualung while the CD is in the drive All tracks of the CD will be removed even if they were mixed with other audio files or some of them were removed manually 7 8 CDDB You can set some parameters of the CDDB lookups here As for the query protocol standard CDDBP port 888 and CDDB over HTTP port 80 are supported The standard CDDBP port is the recom mended choice unless some unavoidable firewall settings prevent you from using it For submission HTTP is always used The default CDDB database server address is freedb org but you may specify another server maybe a close mirror The connectio
45. from filesystem for stores only i I bring up the File info dialog for tracks only q Q ESC hide window same as ALT S in main window In addition to the popup menu items and keyboard shortcuts you can also add an item to the Playlist by drag amp dropping from the Music Store window into the Playlist This method has a further advantage you can place the newly added items in any position not just append to the end of the list Another trick is that middle clicking on an item in the Music Store adds the content to a new playlist tab which will be named after the middle clicked element by default 9 Extending Aqualung 9 1 Introduction Aqualung is written in the C programming language but if compiled with Lua support embeds a Lua interpreter that can used by the user to change Aqualung s behavior or add custom functions without recompiling the program Aqualung supports the following 5 types of extensions e Title Format e Hooks Playlist Menu Commands Remote Commands e Keybindings The Lua extension file setting appears if Aqualung is compiled with Lua support It allows you to choose a lua file containing Lua code that implements any of the above extensions You can type in the path to the file or click Browse to get a file chooser The lua file should be a valid Lua source code file If you change the Lua extension file setting in the options page and accept the changes Aqualung will close the existing
46. g the files and adding the record to the Music Store as part of the process See this section for details 4 3 2 Building or Updating a store from filesystem Aqualung comes with a Music Store Builder facility which allows you to easily create a store from your existing audio files This is essential if you already have a large music collection on your harddrive Please make sure to read this section to understand the concepts and usage of this feature 4 3 3 Arranging your collection Each store artist record and track has fields you can fill in via bringing up the Edit dialog for that item The Visible name is obviously the string that will appear in the Music Store tree and in the Playlist The Name to sort by is a string key used for sorting items on the same level of hierarchy all artists records of a given artist and tracks of a given record For artists you should enter the same here as the Visible name for ordinary band names you can use copy amp paste to do that or simply press ENTER while the cursor is in the visible name entry However for some artists you will enter a slightly modified string Mayall John or just Mayall for John Mayall for example This is to ensure that John Mayall which is the visible name appears between Mahavishnu and Morphine and not somewhere near Jethro Tull Records have a Year field to store the release year The Name to sort by field should usually be this y
47. ging that is writing data from the Music Store into file metadata The feature can be invoked on a store artist record or a single track using the Batch update file metadata popup menu item Supported metadata fields are artist record and track name track number track comment and year The names are copied from the visible name fields of the artist record and track the track number and comment are set from the sort name and comment field of the track respectively The year is extracted from the sort name field of the record Aqualung User s Manual 19 6 3 Metadata related behavior 6 3 1 Configuration Configuring metdata related behavior can be done in Settings Metadata The file metadata will always be used if available when adding external files i e not from the Music Store to Playlist If no metadata is found the filename will be used as a title string In such cases the Adding files to Playlist option controls whether to use the basename only instead of the full pathname You can utilize filename extension removal and substitution of underscores to space as well It is possible to select which ReplayGain tag should be used in case ReplayGain information is found in a file This should be set according to your preference for Album based or Track based volume averaging If the requested field is not found the other one is checked and if that exists it is used instead For the metadata editor File info dialog you can choos
48. h the right mouse button which will pop up the program s main menu Choosing Settings from the menu will open the configuration dialog In fact clicking with the right mouse button almost anywhere is a generally smart idea Aqualung has lots of context sensitive popup menus in the Music Store the Playlist often embedded in the main window and elsewhere It s good to keep this in mind when taking the explorative approach instead of reading the whole manual right away Let s add some music to the Playlist and start playback right away Right click the Add files button and choose Add directory from the menu The right clicking trick works for the other two buttons as well Left clicking is a shortcut to immediately execute the action denoted by the button s caption Choose a directory with some music under it It s OK to have subdirectories under this directory the program will search for playable files recursively After the Playlist starts to get populated with tracks press play or double click on one of the tracks to play Press i to see metadata information about the selected track 2 3 Setting up a Music Store Now that you have some music playing let s get more organized In the Music Store window click in the empty area with the right mouse button and choose Create empty store from the menu Enter a meaningful name such as Tom s Music and choose a location to save the XML file of the store to This should be a wri
49. he Builder to perform CDDB lookups so only metadata and filename transformations are available with this mode If your audio files are basically organized in a directory structure that allows a directory driven build to be performed but you also happen to have audio files on higher record or artist levels run the Builder in directory driven mode first then use the independent mode on the same root directory to add the outstanding files too The Builder can gain information about your music from three sources metadata if your audio files are correctly tagged CDDB lookups and the filesystem names of the audio files and directories themselves If you are up to building a new store first create an empty store right click in Music Store then choose the Create empty store item then right click on the new store and choose Build Update store from filesystem After selecting the desired building mode the builder dialog appears with several options broken down into five notebook pages Later if you only want to update the content of a store you can start a build process on a non empty store as well Aqualung User s Manual 17 On the General page you have to select the root directory of your music collection With the directory driven mode the appropriate structure should also be selected You can exclude files from the build process that match a wildcard pattern or more precisely at least one element in a list of wildcard patterns T
50. he list is comma separated e g jpg png gif will cause all files having jpg png or gif extension to be left out Note that hidden files whose name starts with a period are always excluded Also note that no spaces should be used around the commas because they would be counted in the wildcard patterns causing a lot of headache Similarly you may include only those files that match a wildcard pattern The syntax is the same as with the exclusion This easily allows you to build a store containing music e g encoded with FLAC and another store for Ogg while the audio files can be placed together even in the same directory Exclude and include patterns are case insensitive If you choose to reset existing data only track name length manual RVA and empty comment fields will be overwritten and the latter two are only if you have enabled importing the Replaygain and Comment tags on the Track tab Removing non existing files will remove all tracks from the store that no longer exist on the filesystem Empty artists and records will also be removed The builder dialog has separate notebook pages for artists records and tracks The settings made on a page only concern the appropriate category either artist record or track The operations and transformations are performed in the same order as they are placed on the page from top to bottom 5 4 1 Data sources With each mode you can set the priority of data sources for artist names reco
51. ire up top or something similar on a spare terminal and start with the best converter If your machine is not very new this will consume huge amounts of CPU and the playback will very likely be choppy If this is the case you will have to pick another converter Fastest Sinc Interpolator is usable on today s most machines If not use Linear Interpolator instead of ZOH since both are blindingly fast but linear is naturally much better than zero order constant hold It should also be noted that the CPU usage of sample rate conversion is greatly affected by the difference between the two sample rates upsampling 32k to 96k will be much more expensive than say upsampling from 44 1k to 48k Of course sample rate conversion springs into action only when the output sample rate the sample rate you specified in case of OSS or ALSA or the sample rate the JACK server specified in case of JACK does not match the sample rate of the track you are playing A typical situation is when you have 44 1k files grabbed from CD and play back at 48k 7 5 Playback RVA This page is for setting the RVA options RVA itself has already been discussed above 7 6 Metadata On this page you can configure how the Aqualung metadata subsystem works See this section for a detailed description 7 7 CD Audio You can set the drive speed for CD playing in CD ROM speed units Lower speed usually means less drive noise However when using Paranoia error correction modes
52. is a volume adjustment Aqualung User s Manual 20 in itself specifying the amount of cut or boost to apply when playing the track On the other hand Aqualung s loudness levels merely serve as an indicator of the track s loudness and are converted to actual volume adjustment values when adding the track to the Playlist via Aqualung s RVA algorithm which is a quite sophisticated tool based on listening environments also supporting statistics based handling of Album based volume averaging 6 3 4 Metadata transfer when exporting When exporting files Aqualung attempts to retain the metadata of the original file as much as possible by transcoding metadata into the tags supported by the output format For each frame present in the input metadata it is determined whether it is possible to add an equivalent frame to one of the tags supported by the output format If yes the frame data is converted and stored Note that for each frame type e g Title only one source tag is chosen to be copied from even if it is present in more than one tag in the input metadata In this case the tag with the highest precedence is used as input Of course if more instances of the same frame are present in the same tag e g multiple APIC frames in an ID3v2 tag they are all transferred if the output metadata format supports them This feature essentially means that files are transcoded with intelligent metadata transfer For ex ample exporting a
53. is is especially handy if you own a portable music player since it can be easily filled with music you already have on your computer transcoding and tagging the files so they can be readily used by the device The feature is available from the right click popup menus both in Music Store and Playlist and via the shortcut x or X in Music Store only It operates on the selected Music Store node or the selected tracks in the Playlist The export dialog handles the settings of output directory filename and file format Subdirectories can be created for artists and or records with adjustable limit for the length of the created directory names The actual filename is generated using the filename template This template is very similar to the well known Title format in Settings General only it accepts a few more special sequences o for the original audio filename without extension n for the track number two digit zero padded i for an identifier which is unique within an export session and x for the file extension The latter is determined by the output file format and will be one of flac ogg mp3 or wav The file format setting is exactly the same as with CD ripping refer to this section for details The metadata of the exported files is transcoded to the new format as well as the audio data read more about this here 5 2 LADSPA plugins One great feature of the program is
54. ists mainly for those who have a stable sound setup and always use the program with the same output device e g they have only OSS and don t plan to upgrade For such users it may be cumbersome to always specify the desired output device on the command line along with its optional parameters if needed So here you may enter something that you would otherwise enter on the command line every time But beware you cannot override or turn off every option so for example if you enter help here the program will always display the standard message and exit immediately and there is no way to override that from the command line If you get into trouble all you have to or can do is grab a text editor and hack it out of aqualung config xml where it is stored You will find it between lt default_param gt and lt default_param gt There are also some options to handle the display of album cover art This feature is automatically triggered when an image file is found in the same directory as the track being played The filenames that will at first be looked for are cover ext cover ext front ext front ext folder ext folder ext where ext is one of jpg jpeg png gif bmp tif tiff If none of them exists the first image file having an appropriate extension will be used If you select a record or one of its tracks in the Music Store the image
55. ks that stand out too much and will be disregarded when computing the average volume You can select whether you want to specify a threshold in linear volume units dBFS or you want to specify a percentage of the standard deviation of the set of individual track volumes to use as a threshold The default values should work well for the vast majority of records If you always want every track s volume to count in the average adjustment of the record choose the linear threshold and set it to a really big value say 30 dB so all tracks will be within this range For external tracks added to the Playlist and having no volume information you can specify a fixed RVA value using RVA for Unmeasured Files This applies to all tracks coming from outside the Music Store or a native XML playlist file and to URLs You also have the possibility to always use a manually specified fixed value as RVA for a particular track In the Edit track dialog for that track check the Use manual RVA value checkbox and set the value with the spinbutton on its right If you e g import an ID3v2 4 RVA tag from an MP3 file it will also set this field thereby circumventing Aqualung s own RVA calculation It is possible to have more volume calculations in progress at a time If you need to measure a few records you don t have to wait for the previous one to finish RVA calculations can also be paused so should you suddenly need the whole CPU capacity you don t have to abo
56. ltiple CDs into the same directory won t work 3 Command Line Interface 3 1 Invocation aqualung help Print help message with valid parameters and example invocations aqualung version Print version information and list of compiled in features aqualung output jacklpulselalsaloss sndio win32 options file1 file2 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 3 2 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 lt int gt When running D set scheduler priority to lt int gt defaults to 1 3 3 Out
57. m s channels end return m end Pad the string to the given length adding spaces if it is too short and truncating it if it is too long function pad s n local 1 string len s if 1 gt n then s string sub s 1 n else S s string rep n 1 end return s end Combine the left and right sides with the right side having priority function finalize l r return pad 1 maxlen string len r r end Build the title in two parts a left part channel and frequency expections albun track number title and a right part artist genre comment date and gain The right part is columnar the left side is not function playlist_title local 1 chan freqO formatif album_or_dir s formatif m trackno s title_or_file local r m artist formatif m genre s pad m comment 12 pad m date 4 pad m track_gain 5 pad m album_gain 5 return finalize l r end Results Aqualung User s Manual 32 e Rising Force 02 Far Beyond the Sun Yngwie Malmsteen Metal 1984 0 89 0 94 e irish_music Greensleeves Celtic 1990 0 83 Complete list of values that the m function accepts title artist album date genre trackno comment disc performer description organization location contact license copyright isrc version subtitle debut_album publish
58. n exiting and starting the program is turned on by default If you prefer starting with an empty Playlist every time turn it off You can also set whether to save the Playlist periodically The interval for this is adjustable between 1 and 60 minutes Here you can also set the visibility of the track lengths and RVA values in the Playlist By drag amp dropping entries in the list you can rearrange the columns The position of those that are not shown is of course irrelevant Other options should be obvious such as hiding the statusbar or showing active track name in bold 7 3 Music Store The purpose and usage of Music Store and database files have been covered On this page you can somewhat customize the Music Store decide whether to hide the comment pane or the status bar or to enable rules hint If you choose to expand stores on startup all toplevel tree nodes will automatically be expanded after starting Aqualung As already mentioned before this page is also the place to manage music store database files too Pressing the Refresh button will update the accessibility r rw unreachable flags of the specified store files 7 4 DSP Changing the two options on the DSP page takes effect immediately and stays that way regardless of whether you leave the dialog with the OK or Cancel button The sample rate converter type should be chosen to fit the resources of your computer and provide the best affordable quality at the same time So f
59. n timeout can also be set here If you want to submit records to the CDDB server you will have to give a valid email address Should your submission be rejected for some reason you will receive a note about the failure to this address Retrieved matches are cached in the cddbslave directory by default If you prefer an other location instead specify a local CDDB directory If you do not intend to download from a CDDB server at all you can set to use the local database only 7 9 Internet Instead of connecting directly to the Internet you can use an HTTP proxy In this case you have to specify the proxy server address and port You may also provide a list of domains that should be accessed without using the proxy Setting a proxy affects Internet radio streaming podcast downloading and CDDB lookups Timeout for socket I O is used to prevent Aqualung from hanging if data is coming too slowly or not at all from a radio station 7 10 Appearance On this page you can decide whether to override some fonts and colors provided by the skins You can change the font of the Music Store Playlist the track and timer labels and set the color of the active track in Playlist Useful if you have problems with font size or your system lacks or improperly renders a font specified in a skin You can entirely get rid of all skin settings by selecting Disable skin support It allows you to flawlessly use a GTK or other theme with Aqualung Aqualung User
60. o Aqualung by calling the add_remote_command function with a string and a function The string is the name of the remote command and the function is the function to call when the remote command is triggered You can call a custom remote command using the C argument to aqualung e g aqualung C function_name The string argument function name should be fewer than 250 characters The function should accept zero arguments Aqualung User s Manual 34 Example 1 Exiting Aqualung immediately add_remote_command exit function os exit end Call with aqualung C exit Using this example is not recommended 9 6 Custom Keybindings You can add custom keybindings for Aqualungs main window by calling the add_main_keybinding function with a string and a function The string is the GDK name of the key optionally preceded by modifiers and the function is the function to call when the keybinding is used in the main window directly after a Ctrl z or Ctrl Z keybinding The function should accept zero arguments Here is a complete list of optional modifiers control alt super control alt super alt super control super control alt The control modifier is for the Ctrl key the alt is for the Alt Mod1 keys and the super is for the Super Mod4 Windows keys Example 1 Exiting Aqualung immediately add_main_keybinding control q function os exit end Using this example is not recommended
61. o the comment field of the record in question using the Add to Comments button next to the appropriate text entry The CDDB submission option brings up a dialog which contains the artist title year category genre and extended data fields and the track list All fields including track names are editable The artist title year and category fields are mandatory the genre and extended data are optional Track names should be all set as well You are also recommended to comply with the naming rules amp when submitting new records 4 3 7 Audio CD If Aqualung was compiled with Audio CD support a store called CD Audio appears as the first store in Music Store This special store contains a node for each drive in your machine Detecting hot swappable devices such as external USB drives is supported so you don t need to restart the program after plugging in your drive Aqualung will notice not only the change of discs in devices but device changes themselves too When you insert a CD in a drive the corresponding node will contain the audio tracks on that disc The artist record and track names are automatically set from CD Text information if found on the CD or a CDDB lookup The drive nodes have options available from the popup menu for adding content to the Playlist manual CDDB lookup and submission just like normal album nodes do They have some further CD specific options as well The most important feature is ripping the CD
62. per right corner The blue line shows the identity function no change while the red line shows the output volume the actual transfer function The adjustment applied at a particular track volume is the vertical distance between the two lines at that position The transfer function is linear You can use the Reference volume and Steepness controls to change its position In most cases it is desirable that tracks of the same record receive the same adjustment so as to preserve the volume differences internal to the record This can be enabled by checking Apply averaged RVA to tracks of the same record When enabled volume levels of the same record will be averaged and all tracks will be adjusted by an average value Please note that measured volume levels are converted to RVA values when you add something from the Music Store to the Playlist Therefore this feature works only when you add an Artist or a Record If you add a record by adding all the Tracks manually one Aqualung User s Manual 16 after another they will all receive independent RVA values Also changing RVA settings will not affect entries already in the Playlist There are many records having one or two tracks that really stand out of the average volume level For example there is one very silent track on an otherwise loud record In this case these tracks would pull down the average volume To get around this you can adjust a threshold that will be used to sort out trac
63. put specific options 3 3 1 Options relevant to ALSA output d device lt name gt Set the output device defaults to default r rate lt int gt Set the output sample rate b buffer size lt int gt Set the ALSA output buffer size in frames R realtime Try to use realtime SCHED_FIFO scheduling for ALSA output thread Aqualung User s Manual 6 P priority lt int gt When running realtime set scheduler priority to lt int gt default is 1 when R is used 3 3 2 Options relevant to OSS output d device lt name gt Set the output device defaults to dev audio on OpenBSD dev dsp on other Unices r rate lt int gt Set the output sample rate R realtime Try to use realtime SCHED_FIFO scheduling for OSS output thread P priority lt int gt When running realtime set scheduler priority to lt int gt default is 1 when R is used 3 3 3 Options relevant to JACK output al lt port_L gt lt port_R gt auto lt port_L gt lt port_R gt Auto connect output ports to given JACK ports defaults to first two hardware playback ports c client lt name gt 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 3 3 4 Options relevant to PulseAudio and sndio output r rate lt int gt Set the output sampl
64. qualung User s Manual 5 Pressing OK will start the process during which the directory structure below the root you specified will be traversed The artist record track names are determined from potentially multiple data sources CDDB metadata e g ID3v2 tags or Ogg Xiph comments and filesystem names The logic involved is fairly elaborate You are strongly advised to read the detailed usage instructions for the Music Store Builder 2 4 Playing and ripping an Audio CD You can play CDs with Aqualung easily Just put the CD in one of your CD drives and if everything goes well Aqualung will detect it do a CDDB lookup to retrieve artist record and track info CD Text is also used if the CD has it and make it available to you through the special Music Store node called CD Audio You don t have to be happy with what you have so far The Music Store paradigm is fairly addictive as it s much easier to drop something into the Playlist from the Music Store than physically placing a CD in the drive So as you keep expanding your CD collection you will probably want to have those records in one of your music stores too In this case all you have to do is choose Rip CD from the disc s popup menu and supply some information We won t go into details here please refer to this section in case the interface is not obvious However it is worth stating that you should have a separate directory for the files of each record Ripping mu
65. rd titles and tracks independently highest comes first Simply drag amp drop the lines of the list to achieve the desired order For example if you have proper tags in you audio files for track names only but none for artists and records you may use metadata for tracks at first place and use CDDB for artists and records instead The data sources can also be disabled by clicking on the check boxes The Builder looks for usable data in the given priority and will use the first suitable one A short note on the Filesystem source when using the directory driven mode with structure a the artists and records will have the same filesystem name which is the name of the record directory Using pattern b c or d will result in all artists records and tracks having the name of their respective directory or file for tracks as the filesystem name With c and d the name of the rightmost artist directory is used When using the independent mode artists records and tracks will have the same filesystem name which is the filename of the audio file being imported Regardless of the data source that won the contest for being the source of your artist record or track name you can perform several transformations on this string before accepting it as final 5 4 2 Regular expressions The main goal of the regexp module is to perform sed like substitutions allowing you to extract the artist record or track name from the string It has the effect of
66. rol center of the program and is a central place to set user accessible options affecting the behavior of the program It is accessible from the main window s popup menu and is split into multiple notebook pages to make arranging and accessing all the options easier The following subsections describe the individual notebook pages of the dialog 7 1 General The General tab itself is further divided into tabs which are explained below 7 1 1 Main Window The options controlling the behavior of the Main Window speak for themselves One advantage of combining the Play and Pause buttons is that it allows for starting playback and later toggling between play and pause with the same remote command aqualung NO play It is useful if your keyboard has a combined Play Pause multimedia button and you want to utilize its functionality to control Aqualung via remote commands 7 1 2 Title Format The Title format string will be used to construct a single title line from an Artist a Record and a Track name when adding songs to the Playlist The Artist Record and Track names should appear as a r and t flags in the template respectively Conditional string elements can be inserted using a A1 A2 An CONTENT expression where each Ai should be a subset of the available flag characters that is the set a r t The value of the conditional expression is the logical OR of the individual Ai expressions The value of
67. rt the process just pause it and resume when things go down 5 4 Music Store Builder Aqualung s Music Store Builder allows you to easily create a store from your existing audio files This is essential if you already have a large music collection on your harddrive The Builder supports two approaches for automatically adding audio files to the Music Store The directory driven mode requires the collection to be organized in a strict filesystem structure where the directory structure itself specifies which files belong to a record and which records belong to an artist The structure should conform to one of the following patterns v root record track root artist record track root artist artist record track root artist artist artist record track aoe YS Sn Pattern a is useful when you do not have separate subdirectories for artists only for records The b means that each artist and record has its own subdirectory It corresponds to the structure introduced above along with the Music Store The patterns c and d are for those who have too many artists to keep them at the same level you may thus have a subdirectory for every artist starting with letter a b etc or you can even dedicate two levels to them perhaps as b be beatles c cr crimson etc The independent mode does not follow any directory structure only searches for audio files recursively starting from root This doesn t allow t
68. s and Tracks When you activate this option a small window will pop up with a progress bar You can move this window out of your way and proceed with using Aqualung Processing will be carried out in the background and should not affect your ability to play music at all Calculated volume levels will be saved and restored with the rest of the Music Store The values are shown in the Edit track dialog When you are done with this open the Settings dialog right click almost anywhere in the main window and select the Playback RVA notebook page If Enable playback RVA is unchecked the whole RVA system is turned off No tracks receive adjust ment If playback RVA is enabled you can select a listening environment that matches your setup The idea is that the better your environment the smaller adjustment you need to enjoy the music If you work in a noisy workshop and listen to Aqualung played music then it is best to minimize the volume differences between tracks so all tracks will be uniformly audible at a particular volume setting If you can afford to listen to music in a silent room with high quality headphones or good near field monitors you should choose Audiophile which will yield no change to volumes The diagram shows the input output transfer function applied to the previously measured track loudness to obtain the adjustment needed for a particular track The diagram is 24 dB large in both directions with the 0 0 point being in the up
69. se it is saved in M3U format one filename per line When saving an XML playlist you should normally end your filename with xml however this is only good practice and not necessary If you choose Save all playlists the XML will be a multi tabbed playlist containing all tabs while Save playlist saves the current playlist only When saving all playlists it will always use the XML format as the M3U file format does not support multiple playlists Note that the XML playlist file format is not compatible with Winamp XMMS m3u files However Aqualung will open playlists in M3U and PLS formats whenever possible When opening a multi tabbed playlist all opened tabs will be appended after the present ones and the existing tabs will be remained intact regardless of whether you chose loading which normally clears the current playlist before adding or enqueueing which appends songs to the playlist Opening any other playlist type single XML playlist created by Save playlist M3U or PLS playlists will behave according to the option you chose Load in new tab Load or Enqueue The usual cut copy and paste functions are accessible via keyboard shortcuts and work across playlist tabs as well Rearranging tracks by drag amp dropping items is also supported You can even drag a track from a playlist into another by dragging on the tab first in order to switch to the target playlist The only restriction is that album nodes cannot
70. so it specifies the file to use for the extension support See the Extending Aqualung section for details about what s possible to include in this file 7 1 4 Systray This page is present only if Aqualung was compiled with systray support Even if it is supported it can be turned off here which naturally makes further configuration useless If systray is enabled Aqualung can start in minimized state a useful feature if the program is launched automatically from the startup script of the window manager Mouse button and wheel events on the tray icon are supported and can be assigned configurable commands You can assign separate commands to the vertical and horizontal mouse wheels Choose the desired command from the list displayed by the corresponding combo box The left and right mouse buttons are reserved for hiding showing the windows and popping up the context menu respectively Any other buttons can be bound to a custom command by adding a new button to the list In the presented dialog move the cursor over the test panel and press the button you want to configure Below the test panel choose the appropriate action to be taken when you click on the tray icon with the selected mouse button One button can be assigned only one command at a time To change an already configured button remove it from the list first and add it again 7 1 5 Miscellaneous The so called Implicit command line is something you should pay attention to It ex
71. stalling such a package is generally the easiest and fastest way to get Aqualung however this way you won t be able to try the latest features Currently there are Aqualung packages for major Linux distributions such as Debian Ef Gentoo SuSE etc as well as FreeBSD er If your distribution lacks such a package consider contacting the organization maintaining the distribution and ask them to provide a package of Aqualung Anyway you might have to compile Aqualung from source This is not very hard either the configure script tries to adapt Aqualung to your system as much as possible without breaking the program See the above website for more information On Microsoft Windows all you have to do is download and run the self extracting installer utility which guides you through a few easy to follow steps and installs the program on your machine Make sure to visit this page amp for more information about the Windows version of Aqualung 2 2 Starting the program for the first time Aqualung has a large number of configuration settings which are adjustable through the user interface at run time no need to edit config files by hand and are remembered across multiple invocations of the program When Aqualung starts for the first time it creates a configuration based on some wired in defaults A good way of exploring the program s capabilities is poking through the configuration area You can access this by clicking in the main window wit
72. t all CTRL SHIFT A select none DELETE remove selected tracks SHIFT DELETE remove all tracks CTRL DELETE remove selected tracks from filesystem confirmation required u U cut selected remove not selected tracks t T send selected songs to iRiver iFP device LLFI bring up the File info dialog also accessible from the right click T popup menu f F search in Playlist CTRL T new tab CTRL R rename tab CTRL W close tab CTRL SHIFT T undo close tab CTRL PageDown CTRL TAB switch to next tab CTRL PageUp CTRL SHIFT TAB switch to previous tab CTRL X cut selection to clipboard CTRL C copy selection to clipboard CTRL V paste clipboard before cursor CTRL SHIFT V paste clipboard after cursor q Q ESC hide window same as ALT L in main window Aqualung User s Manual 28 8 3 Music Store key action up down arrow navigation in the tree ENTER expand collapse current node w W collapse all rows double click a A add item to Playlist recursive n N new item CTRL N new child item e E edit item x X export item DELETE remove item ua U Build Update store from filesystem for stores Update for podcasts v V start volume calculation for unmeasured items recursive f F search in all stores s S save store for stores only b B build update store
73. t any file in the Playlist regardless of the contents of your Music Store using the Add files button at the bottom of the window Adding a directory or a URL are also supported by right clicking on the button and selecting the appropriate menu item Add directory or Add URL The Add URL menu item can be used to listen to Internet radio stations streaming Ogg Vorbis or MP3 You will be shown a dialog with an entry in which you should enter the URL of the stream Pressing OK will add it to the Playlist After you start playing the stream the Playlist entry changes to the name of the radio station with the description provided by the station in brackets The other two buttons Select all Remove selected function as you would expect them when clicked with the left mouse button Clicking with the right mouse button brings up popup menus that contain further options as seen with the Add files button Aqualung User s Manual 10 There is a statusbar under the list showing the total time of the Playlist and the duration of the selected tracks as well as the size of the songs if enabled The Playlist can not only maintain a linear list of songs but is also capable of keeping the tracks of albums together This is done when a Store Artist or Record has been added to the Playlist using the so called Album mode available from the popup menu in Music Store If you tend to use it extensively there is an option on the Settings Playlist page to make
74. table location so it is wise to stick to a location inside your home directory A system wide path or a remote NFS mount with read only access won t do You can have any number of such stores in the Music Store organizer and it is indeed a great idea to have separate stores for music differentiated by origin genre or some other aspect One great use is multiple stores with the actual music files stored on multiple remote machines one store for each machine Or just a store for your local music and another for files on your bedroom file server box There are several possibilities But how do you populate the store with music you already have on your drive It s easy if your music is stored in an organized manner on the filesystem level As a minimum this means that tracks intended to go into one store are found under a common root directory in the filesystem there may be several directory layers down from the root to the individual files but there must be a common ancestor In this case the so called Music Store Builder will take care of things for you Right click on your newly created empty store and choose Build Update store from filesystem Choose Independent mode and in the dialog you get enter the root directory under which your collection resides As you can probably guess at this point the store builder interface is pretty flexible however the default settings should be good to get something together quickly without further hassle A
75. tate of Playlist Music Store windows 7 3 0 EXAM PES ret Boxee ihe As e aoe RU Bio es Bech ee ee Acetate Bo Ah Se a Re 7 3 9 Environment s ocos sea ce eaa RRR Oa ERR eee ea 8 SLO PES x alt Borde eS ek oe A eS ee do DA ee eed ot a db eS 8 4 Graphical Interface 8 4l Main Windows 2 04 56 sere dba be bbw det Od bday dod ee ba eae 8 4 2 Playlist aoaia ba ae Ree PREG ES e ARHDAS SG DE WE DE AA ES 9 ALS NIUSICStOLG see BG ee a hE He A RIN ESE E 10 ASA OVGIVIEW cs ks he aPC adeadeadart ein Ghee eee eG ad baa eo 10 4 3 2 Building or Updating a store from filesystem o o 11 4 3 3 Arranging your collection o 11 4 3 4 Dealing with multiple stores 2 2 0 0 00 2000000002000 000 11 4 3 5 Handling file metadata 2 0 0 0 0 000000000000 000004 11 43 6 CDDB Support s eee ss eos eea dw ee eee hee ee hE AR G a e SS 12 137 AUdO CD 2 nue 2 oa Me hi ee hh bebe bad de ae bps 12 4 3 8 Podcast support 2 2 2 5 5 6445 45 80 eR EDR a a a e a 13 dd JACK Port Setup os a a x A S eee A i ee 13 40 Skin Chooser aci pa eee GRA Gare ORE AER KES SH Re Ee hb ee eas 14 4 6 System Tray Supra 14 5 Supplemental features 14 5 1 Exporting files from the Music Store or Playlist 0 o 2000 14 5 2 LADSPRA plugins til a e A PORE GEE Saks ba eb Oe he 14 53 The RVA system 15 pA Musie Store Builder i 2 40 44 464 08 HAD Soa RAD Ea SD be be Ree BD 16 5AL Data SOurceS sse sissy a De
76. the Replaygain and Comment tags if available Once you are satisfied with the settings click OK A new window showing the progress is displayed and the store is filled up You can abort the process if you encounter some error or weirdness or just want to refine some settings 6 Metadata support Aqualung has extensive support for viewing and editing most metadata formats in use today This section acts as a reference of the program s metadata related capabilities and behavior Metadata support is implemented in Aqualung by means of the libraries that support the soundfile formats themselves as well as additional code in Aqualung That is no external metadata handling library is employed This has not always been the case and is a result of major refactoring carried out after having poor experience with metadata libraries This means metadata support is inherently present in Aqualung for all soundfile formats that are compiled in Re 6 1 Manual editing The File info dialog accessible from the Music Store and the Playlist acts as a graphical shell for the metadata editing capabilities Its usage is fairly self explanatory For read only tags the dialog has no editing controls so the only available operation is viewing the fields copy pasting them to another location or if the dialog was opened from the Music Store importing the field to the Music Store database Embedded images can also be saved to file For writable files the met
77. ugins can be brought up by double clicking on them same as clicking on the Configure button e Ifa plugin is selected in the running plugins list pressing DELETE will remove it same as pressing the Remove button e Running plugins can be rearranged at any time changing the order in which they are processed via dragging them with the mouse e In the configuration windows of plugins setting input controls back to their default value is possible by shift clicking on the slider This does not work for toggled or integer inputs those that don t have a slider displayed for them 5 3 The RVA system RVA stands for Relative Volume Adjustment and refers to a system that is supposed to compensate for the fact that the perceived volume levels of tracks from different records are sometimes quite different With usual players you are left with the possibility to adjust the volume manually when necessary but not with Aqualung Besides having a fully fledged system for RVA Aqualung also supports using already existing Replay Gain or RVA information present in your audio files metadata If you are interested in this read on but make sure to also check out this section You have to do two things prior to using RVA in Aqualung First you have to calculate the volume of the tracks you want affected by the RVA system To do this use the Calculate volume option in the Music Store found in the right click popup menus of Stores Artists Record

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