Audacious 3.3 Alpha 1 Released With Improved UI, More [PPA]

Audacious is a lightweight music player that comes with a clean GTK interface as well as a Winamp-like interface which supports Winamp 2.x skins.

Audacious 3.3 alpha 1 has been released recently with user interface improvements, a more intelligent search tool, improved MPRIS2 plugin and other important changes.

User interface improvements in Audacious 3.3 alpha 1:

• a slight gradient is now used for the info bar to make it prettier
• the info bar visualization can now be disabled
• the playback toolbar has been styled as a "primary toolbar" to make it look better in GNOME 3 and indeed, Audacious 3.3 looks a lot better with Ambiance / Adwaita themes
• a new genre column
• changed/improved various parts of the preferences UI

Audacious 3.3 alpha 1:

And here's how the stable Audacious (3.2.3) looks like:

Other changes in Audacious 3.3 alpha 1:

• the MPRIS2 plugin (used by GNOME Shell's Media Player indicator) now supports seeking and getting/setting the volume
• the search tool plugin is more intelligent and lets you search by artist, album and song title simultaneously and also, more info is displayed when searching
• new keyboard shortcut (CTRL + Y) to activate the search tool when using the GTK interface (escape brings the focus back to the playlist)
• partially re-written core output code
• new "speed and pitch" plugin (replacing SndStretch)
• fixed audio conversions so that bit-perfect playback is now possible for 16-bit and 24-bit audio files
• the GIO transport plugin is now enabled by default, supporting ftp://, sftp://, and smb:// URI protocols
• the LIRC plugin has been re-added to Audacious
• a new output plugin has been added for OpenBSD’s sndio audio system
• the OSSv3 output plugin has been removed
• a global hotkey can be assigned to raise/focus Audacious
• Audacious now only supports GTK3; the 3.2.x branch with GTK2 support will be maintained for a while though

Install Audacious 3.3 alpha 1 in Ubuntu 12.04

To test Audacious 3.3 alpha 1 in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, you can use the Unstable WebUpd8 PPA. Add the PPA and install Audacious 3.3 alpha 1 using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacious

For other Linux distributions, you can download Audacious 3.3 alpha 1 from HERE.

Remember, Audacious 3.3 is still in alpha so you might find bugs! Report the bugs @ Audacious bug tracker.