[x] [3066] AIMP (Beta) Linux Cachy OS -KDE Plasma 6.5

[AlonsoCCXR]

Dear AIMP Development Team,

💝 A Heartfelt Note of Gratitude from a Lifelong Fan
Before diving into the technical feedback for the Linux version, I wanted to express my deepest, most sincere gratitude and admiration to the entire team. AIMP has been my absolute favorite, go-to audio application for nearly 17 years, ever since I first discovered it during the legendary AIMP 2.4 era (around 2007-2008).

Seeing this magnificent player finally making its way natively to the Linux ecosystem is a dream come true for me. Thank you for your immense dedication, passion, and unparalleled hard work over nearly two decades. You have structured the soundtrack of my life, and I am profoundly grateful for your work.

To help make the native Linux port as perfect and robust as the Windows counterpart, I have gathered a comprehensive technical analysis of three critical areas of opportunity and bugs found within the latest Beta 3 release (6.00.3066).

1. BUG REPORT: MPRIS metadata formatting breaks KDE Plasma 6 Media Widget
Since recent updates in KDE Plasma 6, the system Media Controller panel widget no longer recognizes AIMP when playing music, even though it used to work flawlessly on previous Plasma versions (like 6.5).

Technical Diagnosis:
The application correctly registers the DBus interface (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.AIMP) and global playback controls work perfectly via playerctl. The issue is purely a metadata formatting regression that makes the strict KDE Plasma 6 parser reject the player entirely.

When running playerctl --player=AIMP metadata, the output reveals that:

mpris:artUrl is hardcoded to output file:///dev/null instead of a valid path or being completely omitted.

xesam:album outputs a hyphen ('-').

Because Plasma 6 handles empty fields and null system routes strictly to prevent panel crashes, it ignores AIMP completely when it reads file:///dev/null.

Terminal Output Reference:

Plaintext
AIMP mpris:trackid     '/org/mpris/MediaPlayer2/CurrentTrack'
AIMP mpris:length      245000000
AIMP mpris:artUrl      'file:///dev/null'
AIMP xesam:title       'Cooler Than Me (Official Video)'
AIMP xesam:artist      'Lucky Luke'
AIMP xesam:album       '-'
AIMP xesam:genre       ''
Proposed Solution:
Please consider adjusting the MPRIS backend to omit the artUrl field or leave it blank when no cover art is found, rather than routing it to /dev/null. This will fix the integration with modern KDE Plasma panels natively.

2. DEPLOYMENT BUG: Source Archive Structure Changes Breaking Automated Installation Scripts (AUR / Terminal Update)
We noticed a major deployment issue when attempting to update or install the Beta 3 version using automated terminal packaging tools (such as Arch User Repository helpers like yay or paru on Arch-based distributions).

The terminal update fails completely during the package build and extraction phase due to major undocumented changes inside the new release archive structure:

Missing/Moved Directories: The directory layout inside the new release archive has changed completely compared to previous builds. The extraction scripts fail because the conventional usr folder structure is missing or drastically modified from its root location.

Missing License File: The installation script terminates with errors because the license/copyright file path has changed or the file was removed from the expected directory, preventing automated scripts from completing the packaging cycle.

While downloading and installing the precompiled .pkg.tar.zst directly via pacman -U works perfectly as a manual workaround, the abrupt change in the source archive’s internal directory layout has completely broken community-maintained build scripts and automated terminal updates.

Proposed Solution:
Please consider documenting internal archive layout changes in the changelog, or maintaining consistent directory paths for the binaries, assets, and license files across versions so automated packaging tools don't break upon new releases.

3. AREA OF OPPORTUNITY: Audio Buffer, File Cache, and Native PipeWire DSP Optimization
When playing high-resolution audio files (e.g., 96000 Hz / 32-Bit Float) on modern Linux audio architectures via the current ALSA: pipewire device output selection, there is noticeable audio crackling, stuttering, or minor digital drops under the application's default buffer and latency configurations.

To achieve stable, click-free playback on standard modern Linux hardware, users currently have to perform extensive manual fine-tuning inside AIMP's options:

Significantly inflating the global Audio Buffer up to 500ms or 1000ms.

Increasing the File Cache allocation up to 64MB or 128MB.

Diving into the device's advanced options to push the Latency buffer up to 100ms or 200ms.

Proposed Solution:
Modern Linux distributions (like Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, CachyOS, etc.) have fully migrated from legacy ALSA/PulseAudio setups to PipeWire (and WirePlumber) as their default sound server.
Implementing a native PipeWire output backend inside AIMP for Linux (rather than routing sound exclusively through the ALSA compatibility wrapper layer) and optimizing the internal DSP/resampling engine's buffer handling would dramatically increase out-of-the-box audio stability and eliminate playback performance issues for high-fidelity listeners.

Environment Info for reference:

OS: Arch Linux / CachyOS (x86_64)

DE: KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland)

Audio Server: PipeWire / WirePlumber

AIMP Version: 6.00.3066 Beta 3 (Native PKG)

Long live AIMP! Thank you again for your hard work and incredible contribution to the Linux community.

[Artem]

being completely omitted

It cannot be omitted. If I omit URL, currently displaying albumart will not reset to default. /dev/null was used to force the panel to reset album art image to default stub. Omitting the URL or set it to an empty string does not solve this issue (at least on KDE 6.5)

AUR / Terminal Update

But does not provide any AUR releases.

The directory layout inside the new release archive has changed completely compared to previous builds

No, I've made no changes in file structure.

Missing License File: The installation script terminates with errors because the license/copyright file path has changed or the file was removed from the expected directory, preventing automated scripts from completing the packaging cycle.

No, it's not true. All files are placed in correct locations. Can you provide me a detailed log from the script? What exactly error output?

Implementing a native PipeWire output backend inside AIMP for Linux (rather than routing sound exclusively through the ALSA compatibility wrapper layer) and optimizing the internal DSP/resampling engine's buffer handling would dramatically increase out-of-the-box audio stability and eliminate playback performance issues for high-fidelity listeners.

Ok, I will research for that.

[AlonsoCCXR]

I am very sorry for not being of much help. I am sending you the screenshots, hoping they might be useful to you. Please let me know if you need any additional system logs or further information from my end to help diagnose the issue.

Best regards.

[Artem]

As I can see on your screenshots (some of them are not readable) the error is related to the "/home/alonso/.cache/yay/aimp" path, that is not a part of our package.

About the license file: I will correct my package assemble script to place the LICENSE directly to /usr/share/licenses/aimp/

[AlonsoCCXR]

Thanks for the time and attention; I hope that will be useful.

[adem]

Thanks for the time and attention; I hope that will be useful.

I'm not sure what you are trying to explain. It is better to copy-paste text instead of posting console screenshots. At least text can be simply translated by AI. Anyway it looks like you're trying to install/update AIMP from AUR using YAY.

A) Any problems with AUR's version should be addressed to the package maintainer.

B) OR you can skip AUR update and stick to the official package.

- To ignore AUR update:

Code: [Select]

sudo nano /etc/pacman.confFind [options] section, add the following line and save:

Code: [Select]

IgnorePkg = aimp
- Download and install 64-bit (PKG):

Code: [Select]

sudo pacman -U aimp-6.00-3067b-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
P.S. Before posting long bugs you should read the RULES. The core idea: ONE TOPIC PER BUG.