[ANNOUNCE] PulseAudio 17.0

[Arun Raghavan]

Hello!
After an unintentionally long gap from the last release candidate, I'm pleased to announce the release of PulseAudio 17.0.

tarball: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/releases/pulseaudio-17.0.tar.xz
sha256sum: 053794d6671a3e397d849e478a80b82a63cb9d8ca296bd35b73317bb5ceb87b5

There are a whole bunch of bug fixes in here, plus a few improvements to ALSA UCM-based setups, Bluetooth support, echo cancellation, Windows/macOS fixes, and in a number of other areas. A full changelog can be found at https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/17.0

It should be no surprise that development on PulseAudio has slowed down considerably. We expect significant new work to continue in PipeWire, WirePlumber, and related projects. There are some open MRs that we might shepherd through completion, notably some UCM improvements and _possibly_ support for compressed streams.

We're still around if any issues come up. Since libpulse is still the recommended API for most audio applications, it continues to be supported. There is some continuing work on Pavucontrol that we will also try to shepherd in. Our resources continue to be limited, so contributors' patience is greatly appreciated.

Despite the slower pace of development, there were 54 contributors in git to this release, and I want to extend our heartfelt thanks to them and all the folks on IRC, mailing lists, GitLab, and downstream in distributions for their time with testing, packaging, reporting, translations -- every form of contribution and support.

Have a great weekend!
Arun