Evilander/newamp

[1.17.0] - 2026-07-03

The fifth flagship — the audiophile moat. NewAmp's first native code.

Added

• Bit-Perfect Exclusive (Windows). Settings → Playback grew the toggle the
  audio-quality doc used to call "future phase": true WASAPI-exclusive
  output through a first-party native engine (vendored miniaudio, N-API,
  native/newamp-audio/). When it's on, tracks bypass Chromium, Web Audio,
  and the OS mixer entirely — ffmpeg decodes straight to raw PCM in the main
  process and a lock-free ring feeds the DAC on the WASAPI callback thread.
  • Honest by construction. The stream format is negotiated from the
    device's native exclusive formats; if your DAC's clock can't run the
    source rate, NewAmp resamples explicitly (SoX, precision 28) and tells
    you — it never ships miniaudio's hidden converter (which we caught
    silently resampling 44.1→48 k on real hardware during development, and
    now refuse at open time by comparing requested vs. internal format).
  • The gold badge. The transport's signal-path badge earned a fourth
    tone: gold EXCLUSIVE is the strict claim — lossless source, rate + bit
    depth + channel layout preserved, no DSD conversion. Anything less shows
    EXCLUSIVE* with the exact reason in the tooltip. 16-bit into a 24-bit
    device slot is still gold (zero-padding loses nothing); mono-to-stereo,
    rate conversion, or DSD→PCM honestly is not.
  • No DSP means no DSP. EQ, ReplayGain, crossfade, limiter, preamp and
    software volume are structurally out of the path and grayed in Settings
    with an explanation. Volume is your DAC's knob — same deal foobar2000
    gives you, now with the reasoning printed on the tin.
  • Visualizers stay alive. A 30 Hz playhead-aligned PCM tap flows from
    the native engine into a spec-faithful AnalyserNode emulation (Blackman
    window, 1/N FFT, -86/-10 dB byte mapping), so Eviland, MilkDrop, the
    detached projector, and Resonance react to exactly what the DAC is
    playing — proven by the gate: analyser energy with a silent Web Audio
    graph can only come from the native tap.
  • Gapless over exclusive. When the next track negotiates the identical
    device format, its PCM is spliced into the same ring at the exact frame
    boundary — no reopen, no gap. Rate changes re-open the device with a
    deliberate micro-gap (foobar2000 behavior). Pause releases the device
    after ~15 s so system audio comes back.
  • Falls back like a grown-up. Podcasts, cue-sheet segments, non-library
    files, a device that vanishes mid-track, another app holding the DAC —
    each falls back to the shared path per-track with the reason surfaced in
    Settings, never a silent dead toggle.
  • Gates: smoke:exclusive-output (addon: enum/probe/shared push, exact
    frame accounting; full exclusive HW pass behind
    NEWAMP_EXCLUSIVE_SMOKE_HW=1) and smoke:exclusive-ui (boots the real
    app, plays a FLAC through the native path, asserts exclusive engagement +
    clock advance + tap-fed analysers; earns (bit-perfect) on rate-matched
    hardware).

Fixed

• Windows taskbar icon renders again. The 1.15.0 tray fix converted every
  ICO frame to BMP — including the 256 px frame that the taskbar/high-res
  shell path officially expects as PNG (the CHANGELOG even said the taskbar
  "looked fine" because it decoded PNG). build/icon.ico is now
  mixed-format (BMP < 256 for the tray, PNG @ 256 for the taskbar), rebuilt
  by the new committed scripts/rebuild-icon.mjs (do NOT use fix-logo.py —
  Pillow writes all-PNG and re-breaks the tray). Belt-and-braces: every
  BrowserWindow now sets an explicit window icon and the app declares its
  AppUserModelID (io.newamp.player) so taskbar identity/pinning resolve to
  our icon instead of a stale shell cache.
• docs/audio-quality.md no longer recommends audify/RtAudio for the native
  path — RtAudio's WASAPI exclusive mode is an unimplemented TODO; the doc
  now describes the shipped miniaudio engine and the observed hidden-resample
  trap it refuses.

Verification: full release gate green (automatedOk) at this commit — 95+ smokes including the new smoke:exclusive-output and smoke:exclusive-ui end-to-end gates, real-library completion audit, packaged-app checks. Standing accepted blockers, same as every release: artifacts are unsigned (no Authenticode cert), Last.fm live proof and the human speaker/headphone pass are manual.

SHA256SUMS.txt + BUILD-PROVENANCE.json attached.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Evilander/newamp/compare/v1.16.0...v1.17.0