Aqualung on Mac OS X

This page is dedicated to the native OS X port of Aqualung.

Latest Release: (no release yet)
Latest Snapshot: aqualung.app.zip (19M)
Last updated on 2009-05-27

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Aqualung is an advanced music player originally targeted at the GNU/Linux operating system. It has many useful features built on a rock-solid backend supporting gapless playback that is a rarity not only among Linux players, but also on the Mac OS X platform.

This Mac OS X port is created by Thomas Vecchione (Seablade). Please direct your feedback (if any) to the Aqualung mailing list, clearly indicating in your mail that you are referring to the OS X version (and not the mainline Linux version). A good way of doing this is putting [OSX] or something like that in the subject of your mail. Please don't submit anything to the Aqualung bugtracker concerning this port either.

This port has been compiled and tested on OS X 10.4 using the Quartz UI. This should run fine on OS X 10.5, however it probably will not work on 10.3 or earlier.

This Aqualung binary is compiled with:

Optional features:
  [+] LADSPA plugin support
  [ ] CDDA (Audio CD) support
  [ ] CDDB support
  [+] Sample Rate Converter support
  [ ] iRiver iFP driver support
  [+] Loop playback support
  [ ] Systray support
  [+] Podcast support

Decoding support:
  [+] sndfile (WAV, AIFF, etc.)
  [+] Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
  [+] Ogg Vorbis
  [+] Ogg Speex
  [+] MPEG Audio (MPEG 1-2.5 Layer I-III)
  [+] MOD Audio (MOD, S3M, XM, IT, etc.)
  [ ] Musepack
  [ ] Monkey's Audio Codec
  [+] WavPack
  [ ] LAVC (AC3, AAC, WavPack, WMA, etc.)

Encoding support:
  [+] sndfile (WAV)
  [+] Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
  [+] Ogg Vorbis
  [+] LAME (MP3)

Output driver support:
  [ ] sndio Audio
  [ ] OSS Audio
  [ ] ALSA Audio
  [+] JACK Audio Server
  [ ] Win32 Sound API

News

[2009-05-26] Seablade gets bored and creates a new patchset to compile Aqualung on OS X with GTK-OSX, providing a native Quartz UI. While not fully integrated into the OS X experience, it no longer requires X11 and has been updated to a much more recent version of Aqualung.

[Stone Age] Tom Szilagyi creates a patch against 0.9beta8 based off feedback Seablade gave to compile Aqualung on OS X under X11. This then died a slow painful, and forgotten death as Aqualung development advanced.

Limitations

Currently the following known limitations exist compared to the Linux version. The list is in an approximate decreasing order of significance (also indicating the probability with which further work will happen in that particular area).

CD support does not work properly on OS X. This is most likely due to bugs in libcdio. If you have notable experience with using cdio on OS X, I want to hear from you.
The Jack Audio Server MUST be running before Aqualung is started, or else Aqualung will not start.
The binary, while using Quartz for the UI, does not really integrate into the OS X desktop smoothly yet. A two button mouse or equivalent settings on a trackpad is required for the time being.

Source

The source of this port is maintained as a separate patch against the trunk (R-1065 at the moment) of Aqualung source code. The patch is available here.

Building the source on OS X requires a working GTK-OSX build already, along with any applicable libraries for Aqualung. This is far from simple to do, and should probably not be attempted by most people. Support will not be given on the Aqualung mailing list for issues related to building GTK-OSX or other libraries.

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