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Mike Brady b405c0b896 Version 5.0 Major Release.

New Features:
Multi-Channel and High-Resolution Audio Support
48,000 frames per second ("48k") operation.
48k lossless stereo support.
5.1 and 7.1 surround sound support.
Multi-channel and multi-rate operation on ALSA, PipeWire, PulseAudio, FreeBSD, stdout and Unix pipe output backends.
Automatic Audio Format Selection
Flexible and controllable output format selection.
Automatic rate, sample format, and channel count selection.
Full FFmpeg Integration
Support for transcoding.
Advanced resampling capabilities.
New audio format support.
Enhanced Resampling
New vernier resampling and interpolation method optimized for low-power CPUs.
Better performance on resource-constrained devices.

Convolution and Loudness Enhancements:
Convolution system is now multithreaded and works on stereo and multichannel audio at 48k and 44.1k.
Multiple impulse response (IR) files can now be provided via convolution_ir_files setting.
New convolution_thread_pool_size setting for multithreaded processing (defaults to 1).
Loudness processing now works with stereo and multichannel audio at 48k and 44.1k.
Updated to the most recent HiFi-LoFi FFT convolver.

MQTT Enhancements:
Added new publish_retain boolean option. When enabled, published MQTT messages have the retain flag set, so the MQTT broker stores the last message per topic and new subscribers receive the most recent value immediately. Thanks to lululombard for PR #2142.

D-Bus Enhancements:
Added new dbus_default_message_bus command-line argument (can be system or session) to set the default message bus for both D-Bus native service and MPRIS service.

Performance Improvements:
Enhanced compatibility with AirPlay 2 AutoMix and Smart Tracklists resulting in less unexplained track skipping.
Better operation on low-power devices down to Raspberry Pi B.
Improved efficiency on embedded systems.
Enhanced timestamp handling for better synchronization.
Improved sync error calculation.
Rebuilt buffered audio processor for cleaner handling of immediate and deferred flush requests.

Docker Enhancements:
Reduced Docker image sizes with slimmed-down FFmpeg library.
Removed dhclient from Docker images for smaller footprint.

Bug Fixes:
Fixed MQTT warning on service startup: "Could not establish a mqtt connection". The startup script now correctly states that the mosquitto service is required. Thanks to Hugo Villeneuve for PR #2137.
Fixed compatibility with mbedtls library version 3.4+ (present on recent Linux versions). Thanks to Christian Beier for finding and fixing the bug.
Fixed PulseAudio backend so that PA_ERR_NODATA returns "No latency data yet". Thanks to Vladimir Shakov for the report and fix.
Ensured old flush requests are deleted when a new play session starts. Thanks to saujanyashah for the report.
Fixed format warnings on 64-bit and 32-bit systems
Removed compilation warnings on 32-bit builds
Improved argument checking for debug(), inform(), warn() and die() functions
Fixed "daemon" typos throughout codebase. Thanks to Chris Boot for PR #1981.
Added warning if a convolution impulse response file cannot be read due to bad path or permissions

Build System Improvements:
Unified service file with variable substitution for Avahi support, making it easier to add future service dependencies. Thanks to Hugo Villeneuve.
Network interface selection now only considers interfaces that are up, running and not loopback interfaces. Thanks to Carl Johnson for the suggestion.
Configuration File Changes and Deprecations

New settings: convolution_ir_files (replaces convolution_ir_file), convolution_enabled (replaces convolution), convolution_max_length_in_seconds (replaces convolution_max_length), loudness_enabled (replaces loudness).
New convolution_thread_pool_size setting (defaults to 1).
Deprecated settings: convolution_ir_file, convolution, convolution_max_length, loudness.
Corresponding D-Bus methods and properties have been updated.

Deprecation Notice:
The Jack Audio and soundio backends are deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Consider using the updated PipeWire backend instead.

Documentation Updates
Updated BUILD.md with latest build instructions.
Updated AIRPLAY2.md with feature information.
Enhanced convolution and loudness documentation.

Maintenance:
Fixed FFmpeg deprecation warnings.
Bumped actions/checkout from 6.0.1 to 6.0.2.
Bumped docker/login-action from 3.6.0 to 3.7.0.
Bumped docker/build-push-action from 6.13.0 to 6.15.0.
Bumped docker/setup-qemu-action from 3.4.0 to 3.6.0.
Bumped docker/setup-buildx-action from 3.9.0 to 3.10.0.

2026-02-13 15:17:40 +00:00

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Working with PulseAudio or PipeWire

Many Linux systems, especially desktop Linuxes with a GUI, have PipeWire or PulseAudio installed as sound servers. PipeWire and PulseAudio are widely used and have the great advantage of being easily able to mix audio from multiple sources. The slight downside is that audio may be further processed (e.g. transcoded) on its way to the output device.

To use PipeWire or PulseAudio-based systems, Shairport Sync must be set up as a user service.

Considerations

Shairport Sync will work without modification in a PipeWire- or PulseAudio-based system if built with the default ALSA backend. This is because PipeWire and PulseAudio both provide a default ALSA pseudo-device to receive and play audio from ALSA-compatible programs.
Shairport Sync can be built with "native" PipeWire or PulseAudio backends by adding the --with-pipewire or --with-pulseaudio configuration flags when it is being built. This has the advantage of bypassing the ALSA compatability layer.
To check if PipeWire support is built into Shairport Sync, check that the string PipeWire is included in the version string. (Enter $ shairport-sync -V to get the version string.) Similarly, the version string will include PulseAudio if the PulseAudio backend is built in.
Remember to specify which backend Shairport Sync should use in the configuration file or on the command line.

Automatic Startup of Shairport Sync

The main thing to remember about PipeWire and PulseAudio sound servers is that the services they offer only become available when a user logs in -- that is, they are set up as user services. Shairport Sync relies on them, so it must also be set up as a user service; it can not be set up as a system service because the PipeWire or PulseAudio services needed by Shairport Sync are not available when system services are launched just after system startup.

Starting Shairport Sync as a User Service

To make Shairport Sync start as a user service, (assuming you built and installed Shairport Sync using the BUILD.md guide), ensure you are logged in as the appropriate user and enter:

$ systemctl --user enable shairport-sync

Make sure it is not enabled as a system service:

# systemctl disable shairport-sync

and then reboot.

Problems with User Service

Shairport Sync will function perfectly well as a user service, but there are a number of things to bear in mind:

The AirPlay service will only be available when the user is logged in. When the user logs out, Shairport Sync will terminate and the AirPlay service will disappear.
If the Linux system is a desktop Linux with a GUI, audio will be sent to the default output only when the user is logged in through the GUI.

Automatic user login may help address these problems.

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