mikebrady/shairport-sync 3.1

Version 3.1 –– Better FreeBSD & PulseAudio Support, Enhancements and Bugfixes

on GitHub

The big news is that Version 3.1 brings two new backends offering native *BSD support and synchronised PulseAudio support. Additionally it contains new optional loudness and convolution filters, improvements in non-synchronised backends, enhancements, stability improvements and bug fixes.

New Features

• A sndio backend gives Shairport Sync native fully synchronised output on OpenBSD and FreeBSD, thanks to the work of Tobias Kortkamp (t6).
• A pa backend now allows Shairport Sync to provide synchronised output on PulseAudio-equipped systems (many desktop Linuxes use PulseAudio as their sound manager).
• Optional loudness and convolution filters can be incorporated in the audio processing chain, thanks to the fantastic work of yannpom.
• A volume-change program hook run_this_when_volume_is_set has been added to the general settings stanza to execute an application whenever the volume is changed.

Pesky Changes You Should Know About

• The audio_backend_buffer_desired_length_in_seconds and audio_backend_latency_offset_in_seconds settings have been moved from individual backend stanzas to the general stanza. They now have an effect on every type of backend.
• If you are using a System V (aka systemv) installation, please note that the default location for PID file has moved -- it is now stored at /var/run/shairport-sync/shairport-sync.pid. This change is needed to improve security a little and to improve compatability across platforms. If you're not doing anything strange, this should make no difference.

Enhancements

• Resynchronisation, which happens when the synchronisation is incorrect by more than 50 ms by default, should be a lot less intrusive when it occurs – it should now either insert silence or skip frames, as appropriate.
• The Linux installer has been improved and simplified and a FreeBSD installer introduced.
• A new setting, audio_backend_silent_lead_in_time, allows you to set the duration of the period of silence played (the "silent lead-in") before a play session starts.
• A new command-line option, --logOutputLevel, allows you to output the volume levels to the log whenever they are changed. This may be useful during setup.
• Improvements have been made to the handling of large items of metadata over UDP.
• A new command line option, -j, demonizes Shairport Sync without creating a PID file.
• A new alsa-only setting, mute_using_playback_switch, is available for advanced use.
• Other minor enhancements.

Bug Fixes

• Stability improvements. More care has been taken (!) to make code thread-safe, resulting in improved stability.
• Conversion from stereo to mono has been fixed to avoid clipping while preserving full resolution. Thanks to Robert Jones (RobDeBagel) for bringing this to notice.
• Short intrusions of audio at the start of a new session from the end of the previous session have been eliminated.
• Many (many!) miscellaneous bugs fixed.