Native Musepack (.mpc) support

[jang0]

Reasons, why there should be a native Nullsoft mpc decoder plugin:

- According to the musepack developers, the winamp plugin in_mpc is outdated and won't get any further updates. *
- Fiddling around with 3rd party plugins requires the users to keep 2 programs uptodate
- Since Winamp 5.3, there is Replaygain support. This does not work properly with mpc files. (the plugin has its own support, but it is not integrated to the global replaygain options. therefor all mpc files are treated like files without RG information) It's a shame because this was the first format introducing Replaygain support!
- There is an official library called libmpcdec, under the BSD licence which makes it easy to add mpc support
- mpc is a high quality codec, proved in many blind listening tests.

Any comments?


* statement by Shy, admin of the musepack forum, referring to the statement "Musepack will need to update their plugin." by DJ Egg:

"There is no intention by any Musepack developer to update the existing plugin, which is old and not even libmpcdec based.

You can feel free to quote me: Instead of forever ignoring the first format implementing proper, format built-in ReplayGain and ApeV2 (which was developed especially for it) support, after all these years Winamp should do a little work of their own and write their own libmpcdec based plugin, like the developers of 30+ other players who already have."

[Sawg]

Could probably chop that up in "Things that are never going to happen." MPC is dyeing, if you could ever consider that there was any life in it in the first place. Besides, for any new format with questionable legality, it takes a long time to get added and approved. And when there are already modern formats such as Ogg Vorbis and AAC, there really is no need for another one used by a very tiny, TINY market.

[Koopa]

"There is no intention by any Musepack developer to update the existing plugin, which is old and not even libmpcdec based.

Then you should blame the musepac devs, because with no proper input plug-in for one of the most used players, their format will not be spreaded.

Most people don't know what Musepac is, even the better OGG Vorbis isn't wide spreaded. Other formats like Ogg Vorbis, MP3 (LAME) and AAC brings High Quality. For lossles compression, there is with FLAC a really good format aviable.

Most hardware will never support musepac, so I guess the format will die.

[gaekwad2]

Those developers really haven't developed much in the last couple of years (except for a paranoia about "anti-Musepack trolls").

[Koopa]

Instead of forever ignoring the first format implementing proper, format built-in ReplayGain and ApeV2 (which was developed especially for it) support, after all these years Winamp should do a little work of their own and write their own libmpcdec based plugin

Lol is all I can say, when I read this. Musepac development is dead, no improvements. If you talk about other lossy formats in their forum, the topics will be closed.

disadvantages:

- seeking is broken
- no streaming support
- no multichannel support
- no hardware support.

Sure, mpc was the first format with proper Replaygain support, but it misses major functionality, which is listed above.

You shouldn't expect any hardware support, so then we can use Ogg Vorbis, which is high quality and has the features or MP3 instead. I don't speak about the Fraunhofer codec, LAME is high quality and hasn't the disadvantages listed above, and most hardware is able to play these files.

Never mind, Winamp is just ignoring a pretty unpopular format, which has a lot of known glitches and is absolute unimportant for most people, regardless how good the quality is

If I would create an audio format, I would create input plug-ins for at least the most important players. I wouldn't wait until the devs of the players are adding native support for my format. Otherwise, nobody will use my format and it will die.

[Twilightseer]

If I understand things correctly, the Musepack developers admit themselves that their format is dead but at the same time, say that the Winamp developers should support it?

What's the goddamn point?

(ps : GO KOOPA )

[CraigF]

yeah, bit of a chicken and egg there, no input support in the big players, no format support. I'm not sure what these 30+ players are, but they clearly haven't increased usage of MPC any.

It's dead, just like mp3pro and vqf et al.

And thats without taking format pro's and con's into effect.

[Rocker]

i like the musepack codec its better then aac at least.

too bad the original developer got bored of supporting it and never passed on the project till years later.

i've already re-ripped my mpc files to other formats because of the broken plugins.

[jang0]

some things i'd like to note:

1. i'm not affiliated with the mpc developers. i just quote them.
2. the statement was made after I posted a topic in their forum, about the winamp plugin.
3. who the hell uses in_mod? it's installed by default even though it's a niche product par excellence.
4. patented code was removed from musepack, so it's not illegal
5. no matter who's to blame, the user is going to be the one who suffers

and seriously, compared to things like wma or aac, i'd prefer mpc anytime

[Koopa]

3. I'm using in_mod, sure, a lot of people wont use it, but if you don't like it, simply uncheck it in the installer. Believe me, modules are more spreaded than .mpc files (8Bit forever!!).

5. The user wont suffer, because the user don't know what mpc is, and the user can choose between several other formats, which are much more improved as mpc.

This is the result of bad marketing strategies from the musepack devs.

[DrO]

3. who the hell uses in_mod? it's installed by default even though it's a niche product par excellence.

from the posts made on here a lot more have made their prescence known compared to musepack users. maybe that's just because there's been more issues with it or whatever else but that's how it's seemed from my experience round here for a number of years now.

4. patented code was removed from musepack, so it's not illegal

from the quick look i made when i first saw this thread a day or so back, i saw that the library they provide is under a BSD license which is the same as winamp i believe (if it was gpl then it'd definitely be out of the question, lgpl is just about ok and the flac library was converted to this license recently so that an official in_flac could be made _but_ there have been far more requests for such a plugin which is why that was made and an offical in_mpc isn't looking all that hopeful irrespective the of musepack dev's comments)

5. no matter who's to blame, the user is going to be the one who suffers

alas that's a subjective view and trying to argue that point is tricky for whichever side you're trying to come from it. sadly promotion of the format doesn't help on this matter.


i can understand that it may seem like we're all being negative, etc here but it's not meant to seem that way. as a user and supporter of something ofcourse you're going to want to try and promote it to others and then others are going to have pre-disposed opinions on such things.

the main issue here is that making an official build of a plugin which has already had it's support dropped by developers of their formats isn't a good thing for the very small dev team to spend time working on when it's going to only be useful for a very small proportion of the userbase. coming back to the in_mod point, this is a plugin which has been in the distribution for a number of years now and removing support for this (which isn't of use to however many normal users) would be detrimental for the existing userbase who do make use of it. with the addition of an in_mpc, if it's not already in there then unless people need the feature then they aren't going to miss anything.

really the best hope would be to find someone with coding skills who is interested in musepack support and would be willing to work on such a project to make a new/improved plugin to support the format (though with the stagnation of the current plugin it doesn't look to good otherwise i'd have expected someone else would have at least tried to do something with it)

-daz

[will]

Why does winamp need musepack?

* Because musepack is lossless? No, because we're working on full FLAC support for 5.31.

* Because musepack is high quality? Better than lame encoded alt-preset standard? No.

* Because musepack has a large user base? Quite the opposite is true.

[DJ Egg]

musepack needs winamp more than winamp needs musepack, which is why my original statement of "musepack will need to fix their plugin" still stands.

The 5.25 sdk provides developers with all the info they need, and as already said, there's nothing to stop someone else from writing a new mpc plugin.

[CraigF]

Originally posted by DrO
i saw that the library they provide is under a BSD license which is the same as winamp i believe

Winamp isnt BSD licensed. Winamp can distribute open source code that is BSD licensed, or LGPL. But NOT GPL.

Winamp itself has a proprietary, closed source license.

(dro, i know you know this, thought i would clarify for other people)

[DrO]

i'm only human the whole mix-match of licensing is enough to make anyone who was half-asleep post slightly incorrect facts

-daz