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Topic: Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux (Read 4832 times) previous topic - next topic
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Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

One of the most efficient, if not the most efficient lossless audio coder, Monkey's Audio, finally gets Linux support. Maybe this is the first step to open source release.
MAC for Linux (3.96 pre-alpha)
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Y...&num=1016170294

(thanks goes to atherean for noticing this)
Juha Laaksonheimo

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #1
"MAC for Linux (3.96 pre-alpha)

Here's a console MAC.exe for Linux.  It's a super early pre-alpha, but I thought I'd lay it out here for people to play with.

It's the same code as the Windows MAC.exe minus two parts:

1) backwards compatibility for files 3.92 and before
2) assembly code (which is MMX optimized) (fast mode is the same speed, but extra high runs at about 1/3 the speed as it does in Windows)

Also, note that this creates alpha 3.96 files that have a minor bitstream fix that makes them incompatible with MAC 3.95.  Also, there is no guarantee that these 3.96 files will be supported in the release version of 3.96.

And please, give any feedback or suggestions.  Also, if you're a coding guru and would like to help, let me know.

Thanks.

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/files/MAC_LINUX_396a1.zip

-Matt

(hoping to create a PocketPC version of
MAC before long too)"
Juha Laaksonheimo

 

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #2
Linux lovers,

This is out chance to support Matt and get APE format up to par for Linux usage.
I have tried his alpha executable out in Grip and it seems to work great. Next thing is someone needs to write an input lib file "libape.so" or what not to play the files.

Darwyn

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #3
AWESOME news! I suppose I could write a Linux drop front-end for that sometime...

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #4
(From MA's site)
Time to encode 650mb:

Monkey's Audio 3.90b1 (high)
2.1 min
348.3 MB / 53.6%

FLAC 0.1 (default)
2.9 min
363.7 MB / 56.0%

for a difference of 20 megs, I think FLAC has a much brighter future, and open future, in the area of loseless audio compression..

why contribute and support another format, when there is already one out there that could benefit everyone more? I mean, even, look at the comparison page on their homepage, there are MANY loseless codecs, the most free FLAC, and it has pretty damn good quality too.

as far as a 'drop' interface, layer3maniac this ain't windows, and i'll be damned if you can create an icon directly I can drag stuff from from any area on my WindowMaker desktop

write a cmdline script that'll do what you want quicker and more flexable, thats what they're for. I have a few perl ones I use for duping FLAC's to q5 ogg's in mass for archival/hdd live storages.

hold all the 'you're an opensource zealot' flames, I'm just stating the obvious. if you need support from a company, etc, use APE, or if you can pass by from help on mailing lists and talking to people on irc (which, on OPN *is not* that bad, MANY helpful people are there) and use a system thats open, and portable, and you can rest asure if you archive in it it has a future of at least being able to be ported to other os', use FLAC.

besides, when companies port stuff to nix, its usually unsupported anyways

*edit* ok, so matt may not be a company, hehe, and right now he is not asking for cash, the same applies.. and im not just talking about APE, it applies to all other loseless codecs with the same problem.

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #5
You're not a zealot. You're just a parrot that likes to repeat the same things everyone else has already said to exhaustion.

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #6
Quote
Originally posted by rjamorim
You're not a zealot. You're just a parrot that likes to repeat the same things everyone else has already said to exhaustion.


not a parrot, just putting in my opinion and referring directly to comparisons I found on their page. maybe someone else that reads what I wrote will understand what I am trying to say and switch to FLAC, other than calling me a 'parrot that likes to repeat the same things everyone else has said' .. I don't recall seeing any similar posts in this forum

my post was mainly a reply to darwyn's quote.

Monkey\'s Audio Goes Linux

Reply #7
all popular lossless encoders come very close to each other in file sizes, so I would say, interface, ease of use, speed, and the formats future are the next most important factors of which format/program to choose.

monkey's audio may not be open source but Matt has not shown any signs of even thinking of charging (I’m sure he gets enough money from Music Match to tide him over).  And even if he did, there are other programs which can make ape files.

monkey's audio is without a doubt the easiest and most user friendly lossless audio program/encoder/decoder.  And even it's winamp plug-in is well made and easy to use.

The uperhand FLAC has on Monkey's Audio is that it is open source and it is available for more Operating systems and is beginning to get supported by hardware.  Bad thing for Matt is, these things are very important, and if it wasn't for the interface of Monkey's Audio, no one would use it.

I don't use FLAC because of how un-user friendly it is at this point.  Yeah the format itself is real good, well made and stable, but so is APE (although maybe ape's a little less stable sometimes, so I heard... not that I’ve ever encountered stability problems myself).

flac needs to do a few things to assure it's victory as the king of lossless audio encoders.
1. work on it's plugins for the various audio players it has plugins for.  winamps one does nothing but play flac files.  we need options... and we need them in the default plug-in that comes in the main download.
2. make a nice font end and make presets easily chooseable (low, default, high... and some simple check boxes for other various parameters)...  making people have to work with codes isn't gonna help you get popular.  just make it so you can choose to input your own code and ignore everything else, like razor lame.  after all that, put everything into one installer.
3. work on the encoding speed if possible.  if you can't do much on that end, oh well, then work harder on the front end to make up for that loss.
4. auto tagging (it's a good thing) ... preferably with a tagging format other then ID3.  I’d suggest adopting ogg's tagging system.

monkey's audio is so easy to use it's scary.  FLAC at first was a hassle.  I of course got used to it and could do it faster, but it was never near as easy to use, make my files, update my files, or tag my files as Monkey's Audio.

I'd love to see FLAC do all this so it's popularity would grow and non techies would switch over to a well developed open source format....  but for the time being, for my personal collection of cd's, Monkey's Audio can't be beat.