audacious

Launch the GUI

$ audacious

$ audacious --new-instance [path/to/audio]

$ audacious --enqueue [path/to/directory]

$ audacious --play-pause

$ audacious --[fwd|rew]

$ audacious --stop

$ audacious --headless

$ audacious --quit-after-play

audacious [OPTIONS] [FILE|URL ...]

-h, --help
    Display help information and exit.

-v, --version
    Display version information and exit.

-p, --play
    Start playing the current playlist.

-q, --quit
    Quit Audacious.

-s, --stop
    Stop playback.

-t, --play-pause
    Toggle between play and pause.

-n, --next
    Play the next track in the playlist.

-b, --prev
    Play the previous track in the playlist.

-f, --fwd
    Seek forward in the current track.

-r, --rew
    Seek backward in the current track.

-e, --enqueue FILE|URL...
    Add files or URLs to the playlist without clearing existing entries.

--headless
    Run Audacious without a graphical user interface, useful for command-line control or background operation.

--show-main
    Show the main application window.

--show-list
    Show the playlist window.

--show-equalizer
    Show the equalizer window.

Audacious is a free and open-source audio player renowned for its low resource usage and extensive feature set. It efficiently supports a wide array of audio formats, including popular ones like MP3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and WAV, alongside various module formats. Its design philosophy centers on efficiency and speed, making it an excellent choice for users prioritizing performance or running on older hardware. Audacious boasts a highly extensible plugin architecture, allowing users to effortlessly add new codecs, sound effects, visualizations, and output methods. It provides two distinct user interfaces: a modern GTK-based interface and a classic Winamp-like interface, offering flexibility to suit individual user preferences and workflows.

Audacious is primarily designed as a dedicated audio player. While it can handle streaming audio, it generally does not offer comprehensive video playback capabilities or advanced media library management features found in some larger, more generalized media players. Its full functionality is often realized through its plugin system, and some plugins may need to be installed separately depending on your Linux distribution.

Audacious is built around a highly modular plugin system. This system allows for flexible functionality expansion across various categories, including audio codecs (decoders), output drivers (e.g., ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS), sound effects, visualizations, and general-purpose utility plugins. Users can easily enable or disable plugins from the preferences menu, allowing them to tailor the player to their specific needs and minimize unnecessary resource overhead.

Audacious offers two primary graphical user interface (GUI) modes to cater to different user preferences. The GTK interface provides a more modern, integrated look that often conforms seamlessly with the desktop environment's theme. Alternatively, the Winamp-like interface (also known as the 'classic' or 'skinned' interface) meticulously mimics the appearance and behavior of the iconic Windows media player Winamp, enabling users to apply custom skins for a nostalgic or highly personalized aesthetic.

Audacious was forked from XMMS2 in 2005. The fork's primary goal was to create a more stable and feature-rich audio player while preserving the lightweight nature and skinnable interface reminiscent of the original XMMS (X Multimedia System). XMMS was a highly popular Winamp-like player for Unix-like systems. Audacious's developers aimed to improve upon the codebase, enhance the user experience, and focus on a robust plugin architecture and efficient resource usage, effectively serving as a spiritual successor to the beloved XMMS for many Linux audio enthusiasts.

cmus(1): A lightweight, ncurses-based console music player., mpv(1): A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player that supports a wide variety of media file formats, including audio and video., vlc(1): A popular, cross-platform multimedia player and framework known for playing most multimedia files, DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols., rhythmbox(1): An audio player for Linux that plays and organizes digital music, designed to work well with GNOME.