Audacious
Audacious is a lightweight audio player available for Linux and Windows.
Audacious is designed to produce high quality sound while using low resources. It is highly customizable to meet your needs. You can install add-ins or plug-ins to increase the power of the program. You can install a wide variety of skins to change the look of the program. It also supports Winamp skins, so it is a very versatile program.
How To Install Audacious
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacious
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove audacious
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
I highly recommend that you remove the third party ppa to prevent it from breaking other programs or dependencies after you install the program.
Open your Terminal and enter the following:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacious
You can also download the install file from pkgs.org.
To remove the program enter the following:
sudo apt-get remove audacious
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
I highly recommend that you remove the third party ppa to prevent it from breaking other programs or dependencies after you install the program.
Once you open the program you will see a simple user interface. You can see through the menus in the short slide-show below.
To change the appearance or skin click on the File menu and then click on Settings ...
An Audacious Settings dialog box will appear and the default tab will be Appearance. To change the look of the program, click on the drop-down arrow to the right of Interface and change the setting to Winamp Classic Interface and then scroll through the list of skins and select your favorite.
It comes with seven WinAmp skins to choose from. I llike the Refugee skin the best, but they all have a unique look.
Below is a picture of the Refugee skin. This reminds me of the days when I used WinAmp on my old Windows computer. All the buttons and features work with this skin. This is my default music player and Refugee is my preferred skin.
You can download additional skins and place them in your /usr/share/audacious/Skins folder. The image below contains the default skins. You will need root privileges to move or copy your new skins in that folder.
There are thousands of skins that you can download and install to change the look of Audacious. You can download skins from the WinAmp Heritage Skins webpage, WinAmp Skins webpage, Winamp Skins Collection webpage, Gnome-Look XMMS Skins webpage, PlingStore XMMS Skins, The PCMan Free WinAmp Skins webpage, and Google.
Manually Install a Skin
Download your skin from the Internet and then locate the file on your computer. My skin has a .wsz file extension which means the skin is compressed or archived. You will need to uncompress the the file on your system. If you don't have a program to unzip or uncompress .wsz file, then install PeaZip on your system. Right-click on your compressed file and click on Extract Here to uncompress the skin.
Download your skin from the Internet and then locate the file on your computer. My skin has a .wsz file extension which means the skin is compressed or archived. You will need to uncompress the the file on your system. If you don't have a program to unzip or uncompress .wsz file, then install PeaZip on your system. Right-click on your compressed file and click on Extract Here to uncompress the skin.
You will see a folder extracted from the compressed file. This folder contains the files that make-up your new skin. You will need to copy or move this folder in your /usr/share/audacious/Skins folder. Don't forget that you'll need root privileges to move or copy your new skin in that folder.
Open your file manager (like Caja File Manager) and navigate to the /usr/share/audacious/ folder. Locate the Skins folder and right-click it and select Open as Administrator.
Enter your password when the Authenticate dialog box appears and click the Authenticate button.
If you look in your titlebar you will notice your Skins folder labeled as Skins (as superuser) meaning you have root privileges to that folder.
Now you can select the folder or skin that you extracted and drag-and-drop it to your Skins folder opened as superuser.
You should notice your new folder or skin in your Skins folder.
Open Audacious and go to you Appearance section within your Audacious Settings and scroll down in your Skin list until you locate your new skin.
When you click on it you should notice your player's skin change immediately.
Click the Close button within the Audacious Settings dialog box. You have now manually installed and set your Audacious program to a new skin.
You can tweak, modify, or customize Audacious by going into your Audacious Settings and click the tabs or sections on the left. By default, your Output plugin is set to PulseAudio Output. This should sound great if you're using Ubuntu or one of the Ubuntu Derivatives; however, you can change the Output plugin to see if you get better output sound. I changed to ALSA Output and now it sounds great with the surround sound on this old desktop. PulseAudio mixes audio from all your different applications and feeds them up the chain to ALSA. Changing the Output plugin to ALSA Output bypasses PulseAudio and the settings within PulseAudio using Audacious to control your sound. PulseAudio gives you better volume control within the program.
Here's a look of the Network Settings.
You can customize how your songs are displayed by changing the settings within the Playlist section. You can also control the behavior of the program.
You also control the way the album art is displayed and the way your popups show-up.
You can install and apply multiple plugins to change the behavior of the program.
You have some additional settings within the Advanced tab or section.
The default skin in Audacious looks great when you change your system theme.
The skins you install overrides your system theme. My dark system theme did not effect the color of the installed theme.
I have compressed several Audacious skins into one zip file to help you get started on your collection of skins for this wonderful program. You can download my skin collection from my DropBox or my MediaFire accounts.
Once that you've downloaded the Adacious-Skins.zip file, go to its location and uncompress the file. Then open a second file manager (like Caja File Manager) and navigate to the /usr/share/audacious/ folder. Locate the Skins folder and right-click it and select Open as Administrator. Then go back to your uncompressed skin folders and select them all and move or copy them into your Skins folder.
Below is a small sample of skins that will be added to your collection.
There's an Audacious Qt Interface for KDE users.
Here's a look at the Audacious Settings Qt Interface.
Another great feature of Audacious is its ability to Roll Up the player so that it takes up very little space on your desktop. Just right-click on the player and select View and check the box next to Roll Up Player option.
This is one of my favorite audio or music player's that I've ever used on any platform. It's a light weight program so it doesn't use a lot of your computer's resources and it is very powerful and customizable. I use it as my default music or audio player on my system; however, I organize my albums on my system with Lollypop.
Linux has a lot of audio or music players to choose from.
Linux has a lot of audio or music players to choose from.
Mar 11, 2020