Audirvāna – the well-known music player (and much more) for PCs and NAS devices – is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. And it is launching version 3.0 of the software!
Audirvāna is a music player, library management application and more, available for Windows, macOS and Linux. In addition, versions are available for Synology and QNAP NAS devices. It is therefore a highly versatile solution, with the developers aiming to extract the best possible sound quality from all these devices. Meanwhile, the company has now been around for 15 years. The anniversary announcement takes a look back at how it all began:
‘It all began in 2011, when Damien Plisson, our founder and CEO, ripped a 56-CD box set by pianist Aldo Ciccolini and set out to make his computer sound as good as a CD player. Unable to find software that met his expectations, he created his own and released it online. Audirvāna was born.
At the time, turning a computer into a true hi-fi source was still a new idea. With Audirvāna, we pioneered computer audio, and we fully intend to keep leading the way. Since then, the software has continued to evolve thanks to the trust you place in us and the feedback you share. Your high standards keep pushing us further. Thank you for being with us all these years.
We will release new features this autumn as free updates for Studio and Origin, starting now with multizone playback – currently in public beta – and the other features detailed below. And you can expect more to come! We will also organise a special anniversary contest soon to celebrate with you.’
‘The Beat Goes On’ With Multizone Playback
One of the new software features is multizone playback. This lets you manage and play music in different zones – or rooms – throughout your home with Audirvāna Studio or Origin. Each zone is associated with its own audio device with its own settings, and plays music from the library or streaming service connected to Audirvāna, independently of the other zones.
Nothing changes if you play as usual in a single zone. However, you can now start adding zones from the output selection menu, while a new icon appears in the player to manage them. The feature is currently in public beta and will be released officially shortly.
For those interested: you can join the beta test of the feature here!
More New Features
The latest version of Audirvāna has several more useful and interesting features to offer. Here they are:
UPnP Renderer: Audirvāna Studio now includes a UPnP renderer and makes itself visible on the network. In other words, Audirvāna now has a ‘WiFi Connect’ input, allowing you to stream music to Audirvāna over WiFi – or Ethernet – from another computer or server. The new source can be Audirvāna itself, or another UPnP-compatible server and control point which can select Audirvāna as the output. This feature is also currently in public beta.
Audio Scan Spectrogram: Audio Scan can now display the audio file’s spectrogram, complementing the overall frequency response graph with a time-based visualisation of events in the recording.
Metadata Editing From the Remote App: You can now edit the metadata of a track, album or artist from your local library directly from the Remote app. This was the last ‘missing’ feature in the Remote app needed to match the features of the desktop interface.
Convolution Crossover: It is now possible to use the convolution engine to create crossover filters, typically to create a specific output filter for a subwoofer.