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Rhythmbox 3.5.0 Released with Multistream Backend By Default
Quoting: Rhythmbox 3.5.0 Released with Multistream Backend By Default | UbuntuHandbook —
Rhythmbox used to use xfade as audio playback backend, which handles multiple tracks with one audio pipeline that mix them together.
This was necessary, because many Linux users didn’t run a sound server years ago, and, applications often wrote directly to the sound hardware.
Nowadays, nearly every Linux desktop routes audio through a sound server such as PipeWire and PulseAudio. And, modern sound servers do much better job of mixing streams than the xfade pipeline did.
So, Rhythmbox now uses multisteam as default backend for simpler code, easier maintenance, and better compatibility with modern Linux sound servers.