Install aften with Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, apt

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• aften
• wavfilter
• wavinfo
• wavrms

Project history

Aften's first versioned releases appeared in July 2006, according to the upstream changelog. Early work added command-line controls, multi-channel mapping, WAV input support, VBR adjustments, filters, a separate library/frontend split, and CMake builds.

By the 0.06 and 0.07 releases in 2007, the project had added SIMD detection, SSE/SSE3 and Altivec-related optimizations, CMake shared-library support, dynamic range compression, C++ bindings, parallelization, and improved bit-allocation logic. The final homepage-era release is listed as 0.0.8, with command-line help identifying the 2006-2007 authorship period.

Adoption history

Aften came from the multimedia encoding world around FFmpeg, Doom9, Hydrogenaudio, and SourceForge-era development. The official homepage points users to an aften-devel mailing list, SourceForge bug reporting and git access, a Doom9 forum thread, and a project blog.

The supplied package facts show Aften still carried by Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, and Ubuntu. Its continued packaging is less about active upstream churn and more about keeping a small AC-3 encoder available for scripts and older media-tool workflows.

How it is used

The primary executable encodes WAV input to AC-3 output with options for bitrate, quality, threading, SIMD disabling, dialog normalization, dynamic range compression, stereo rematrixing, block switching, and other A/52 bitstream parameters. Companion utilities in the package facts include wavfilter, wavinfo, and wavrms.

Aften is a package nerd's media tool because it is a small standalone encoder with a precise codec target. It is useful where a script wants AC-3 output without pulling in a larger transcoding workflow, but its upstream history is old enough that packagers usually care about build portability and whether SourceForge source links still resolve.

Why package nerds care

Aften represents the SourceForge multimedia era: a specialized codec tool, a CMake build, a small command-line frontend, and project communication spread across mailing lists, forums, and changelogs. Its package value is preservation and reproducibility more than rapid feature growth.

The official repository still being reachable through SourceForge's code browser matters because the old homepage advertises a git clone URL using the git protocol, which is not suitable as a modern HTTP repository URL.

Timeline

• 2006: Version 0.01 first versioned release.
• 2007: Version 0.07 added parallelization, bindings, and SIMD-related work.
• 2007: Version 0.0.8 documented as the most recent release on the official homepage.
• 2026: Supplied package facts still list Aften in Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix, and Ubuntu.

Related projects

• FFmpeg is the origin point named by the Aften homepage for the standalone AC-3 encoder.
• ATSC A/52 is the bitstream specification Aften targets.
• liba52 and MPlayer are linked from the official homepage as neighboring A/52 and media-tool projects.

Sources

• https://aften.sourceforge.net/
• https://aften.sourceforge.net/buildhelp.html
• https://aften.sourceforge.net/longhelp.html
• https://sourceforge.net/p/aften/code/ci/master/tree/Changelog?format=raw
• source_facts.package-manager