Astra is an audiophile music player designed for local music libraries, supporting MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, OGG, M4A, OPUS, WMA, AIFF, and more via FFmpeg. It offers gapless playback with pre-buffering, multichannel audio remapping, and Dolby Atmos decoding, ensuring albums play seamlessly while maintaining high-fidelity sound.
Astra features real-time DSP visualizers powered by a native C++ engine, including an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, and vectorscope. A fully parametric 10-band EQ with live frequency response, built-in presets, and AutoEQ headphone calibration import lets you precisely shape your sound. Playback controls include shuffle, repeat, and drag-and-drop queue management, while the library automatically extracts metadata, album artwork, and supports global search, favorites, and recently played tracking.
Additional features include output device selection, delay calibration, customizable themes, fullscreen and mini-player modes, Discord Rich Presence, optional Last.fm scrobbling, and an opt-in local API for integrations. Astra delivers a complete, high-quality desktop audio experience with no telemetry, accounts, or streaming.
Astra 0.6.0 Beta changelog:
Audio Engine
- Full overhaul of CoreAudio native module with WASAPI and ALSA patches (#104)
- Significantly improved multichannel audio support and downmixing
- Experimental ambient upmix for stereo tracks on multichannel setups
- Bar mode added to spectrum visualizer
- High-pass and low-pass filter bands added to EQ
- Improved built-in normalization logic
- Fixed bit-perfect PCM duplication on track transitions
- Ported scope flicker fix and proper pause state from Prism
Metadata & Library
- Full multiartist metadata handling overhaul (#86)
- Added Vorbis Comments and ID3v2.4 tag support
- Local and custom artist image support (#43)
- Global settings for artist name parsing (#67)
- Singles toggle; LRC file scanning by filename (#66)
- Length counters on playlists and albums
- New icon on tracks/albums added during the latest library sync (#60)
- Scan for changes and force scan buttons (#62)
- Better playlist import logic with improved missing track UI (#100)
- Fixed metadata hydration bug (#112)
- Fixed .m3u parsing bug
Scrobbling
- AudioScrobbler and ListenBrainz API support (#46)
- Multiscrobble support — submit to multiple services simultaneously
- Custom scrobbler profile system
Lyrics
- Improved lyrics panel logic and gap assumption
- Pop-out lyrics panel (#47)
- Fixed CPU usage bug in lyrics panel
- Lyrics renderer cache bounded to prevent memory growth
UI & Visualization
- UI scaling slider added to settings
- Volume control added to fullscreen mode (#85)
- Fullscreen UI fixes and improvements
- Queue drag modal extended to playlist creation (#65)
- Clearer drop targets and expanded right-click menu (#65)
- Fixed contrast issue on miniplayer; show commit version in title bar (#47)
- Home page message can be replaced with a clock or hidden
- Improved settings UI/UX
- Fixed folder tab persistence, FPS counter, text selection in miniplayer (#57)
- Fixed scroll in fully tracked list view (#89)
Discord RPC
- Improved cover art lookup matching
- Improved client-side RPC structure
- More customization options for rich presence
- Fixed rapid skip race condition and stale update delays
Memory & Performance
- Paged loading for large libraries
- DB migration for significant memory footprint reduction
- Renderer library retention refactor — stop retaining irrelevant data
- Native better-sqlite3 calls replacing JS-side queries
- Reduced JS heap pressure
- Analyzer visibility memory cleanup
- Better live memory reporting
- Grid rendering performance improvements and smoother play animations
- Better prebuffer scheduling
Distribution & CI
- RPM and Tarball packages added to Linux builds (#69, PR #70)
- WinGet auto-publish enabled
- Updated CI builder and checks
- Package updates; Homebrew cask scaffolding updated
- WinGet version badge added to README
Experimental Features
A new section for opt-in experimental features that may get changed or removed based on feedback
- PWA phone controller for remote playback control (#64), with system media controls and QR code pairing wizard
- Library integrity/quality scanner
- 5×5 grid activity indicator
- Graph visualization (PR #61)
- Ambient upmix for stereo-to-multichannel
Download: Astra 0.6.0 Beta | 138.0 MB (Open Source)
View: Astra Home Page | Github | Screenshot
