phiola - audio player, recorder, converter

[freakazoid]

phiola is the successor audio player to fmedia.

Website: https://github.com/stsaz/phiola/

Description:

[Phiola] can play audio files from your device or remote server, record audio from your microphone or Internet radio stream, process and convert audio into another format, and more. Its low CPU consumption conserves the notebook/phone battery. You can issue commands to phiola via its CLI, TUI, GUI, system pipe and SDK interfaces. Its fast startup time allows using it from custom scripts on a "play-and-exit" or "record-and-exit" basis. It's completely portable (all codecs are bundled) - you can run it directly from a read-only flash drive. It's a free and open-source project, and you can use it as a standalone application or as a library for your own software.

Also has versions available for Android and Linux.



Features:

- Play audio: .mp3, .ogg(Vorbis/Opus), .mp4/.mov(AAC/ALAC/MPEG), .mkv/.webm(AAC/ALAC/MPEG/Vorbis/Opus/PCM), .caf(AAC/ALAC/PCM), .avi(AAC/MPEG/PCM), .aac, .mpc; .flac, .ape, .wv, .wav.
- Record audio: .m4a(AAC), .ogg, .opus; .flac, .wav
- Convert audio
- List/search file meta tags; edit MP3 tags
- List available audio devices
- Input: file, directory, HTTP/HTTPS URL, console (stdin), playlists: .m3u, .pls, .cue
- Command Line Interface for Desktop OS
- Terminal/Console UI for interaction at runtime
- GUI for Windows, Linux, Android
- Instant startup time: very short initial delay until the audio starts playing (e.g. Linux/PulseAudio: TUI: ~25ms, GUI: ~50ms)
- Fast (low footprint): keeps your CPU, memory & disk I/O at absolute minimum; spends 99% of time inside codec algorithms

Portable instructions:

- Download the Windows .zip version from https://github.com/stsaz/phiola/releases/latest
- Extract and go to the /mod/gui/ directory and create an empty user.conf file. This will tell phiola to store its settings in the app's directory instead of in %appdata%
- Launch phiola-gui.exe

Mini-review: If you liked fmedia, you'll like phiola as they are basically the same. One change is phiola can play web radio stations with HTTPS, fmedia could only play unencrypted HTTP ones before. If you like no-frills GUI audio players that barely use any CPU, this is one to keep an eye on. Bonus is you can play your audio from the command-line.

[joby_toss]

Added here: https://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=3124

[joby_toss]

Problem: how do I record what I hear on my PC, in background, using global hotkeys?

My solution: phiola + PowerPro +- Playthrough

Configure PowerPro (or other hotkeys manager that supports parsing command line arguments) like this:

-start recording "What you hear" command (in an auto-named .flac file)

Code: Select all

[path to phiola.exe] -Background record -loopback -o @nowdate-@nowtime.flac -remote

-stop recording command

Code: Select all

[path to phiola.exe] remote stop

If you want to also record your microphone sound simultaneously (for example during an online meeting), make sure Playthrough app is already running using the correct settings:


Note: phiola's command line usage offers many other settings.

[freakazoid]

Thanks for posting phiola to TPFC, joby! Also thanks for posting how you're using phiola to record audio.

I think phiola's description about how you can use it as a standalone application or as a library for your own software perfectly outlines how you can use it for other purposes than just an audio player.

[joby_toss]

Yeah, phiola is a great app for sure, thanks for bringing it to our attention!

Note: I should start to mention the authors more often!
phiola is made possible by: (stsaz) Simon Zolin, (IzzySoft) Izzy, (comradekingu) Allan Nordhøy.