HydrogenAudio

Hydrogenaudio Forum => Validated News => Topic started by: madoka@ex-sounds on 2013-01-20 13:56:55

Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: madoka@ex-sounds on 2013-01-20 13:56:55
Monkey's Audio 4.11 available 
URL: http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/)

Changes:
Quote
Version 4.11 (January 20, 2013)
NEW: Switched from MMX to SSE assembly, making compression and decompression faster.
NEW: Switched to latest Microsoft compiler, making everything around 5% faster.
Changed: Removed support for old Monkey's Audio 3.92 and earlier files (it hasn't been possible to make these files for over ten years -- use an old copy of Monkey's Audio to convert these files to the latest format if you have any).
Changed: Fixed a few compiler warnings.
Changed: Removed dependence on third-party NASM assembly compiler in favor of intrinsics (which compile nicely with all major compilers).
Changed: Put all Monkey's Audio source code into a namespace APE so that linking into third-party projects should never have name collisions.v
Changed: Switched from #ifndef/endif to #pragma once (now supported by any reasonable compiler).

Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: romor on 2013-01-20 18:01:16
Congratulations to developers.

Maybe they should have updated their lossless comparison table in provided help file
HA has plenty lossless tests made correctly which can be used for this purpose I guess
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-01-20 18:07:10
Moved to Validated News.

It’s nice to see APE back after almost two years. Some might think that these are minor changes, but I find them encouraging: it looks like they’re aimed towards future development. Given how competitive Monkey’s Audio still is (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=98665) (compressing better than TAK, and almost as well as OptimFrog and [the long-dead and glacially slow] La), it would be great to see improvements; in this spirit, a free 5% boost in speed is a great sign!
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: themanintheshadows_2451 on 2013-01-21 05:35:03
I'm amazed at what I didn't see from this version of Monkey's Audio:

No support for pipe encoding
Error robustness past -c3000? Nothing about that at all.
No blocksize control? Still? (Can't compress high rez audio without it)


Also noticed that this version of APE doesn't play well with the current version of foobar2000 at all. MD5 hashes for APE files can't be seen within the program. Encoding? In three transcoding tests from FLAC to APE, I had problems with 1 to 3 files encoding properly depending on what test I did. Realistically, IMO, you don't know what to expect. I had more success transcoding via command line using Multi-frontend.

Not surprised about the poor support in foobar2000, though. The foobar2000 devs love giving Monkey's Audio the finger, and haven't given them any respect for a long time. With the crap the devs at Monkey's Audio have pulled over the years, though, it's understandable.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Heliologue on 2013-01-21 06:04:57
Not surprised about the poor support in foobar2000, though. The foobar2000 devs love giving Monkey's Audio the finger, and haven't given them any respect for a long time. With the crap the devs at Monkey's Audio have pulled over the years, though, it's understandable.


.APE support is handled by a third-party plugin in foobar2000 (not sure why--licensing problems, perhaps?), so it's a little unfair to blame foobar2000 developers themselves.  What about the MA plugin is sub-par, in your opinion?
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-01-21 06:25:55
Yes, theman, please either explain the meaning of your statements and back them up, or stop inviting an argument about APE vs. foobar2000, a battle that I’m not sure has ever happened in reality. At the very least, you may find it more productive to move your concerns to the sub-forum for fb2k, rather than here.

Quote
.APE support is handled by a third-party plugin in foobar2000 (not sure why--licensing problems, perhaps?)
Nope. (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_input_monkey) Note the name of the author. Anyway, it was updated as recently as the middle of last year, which, again, does not seem to support the allegation that “the foobar2000 devs love giving Monkey's Audio the finger […] for a long time”.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Heliologue on 2013-01-21 06:52:49
I stand corrected; for some strange reason, I thought kode54 maintained the MA plugin.

That being said, if a component is written by Peter, but exogenous to the program proper, is it still considered "third-party"?
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: eahm on 2013-01-21 07:01:35
First of all, thanks for the update. I don't use Monkey's but I love competition.

Little OCD annoyance, could you change Foobar to foobar2000 from the homepage? And Media Center, which media center?

Thanks.

edit:
Also in the Links page: 'Easy CD-DA Extractor' is now known as 'EZ CD Audio Converter'
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: shadowking on 2013-01-21 07:47:39
Nice update. Most of the negative claims against MAC (as with MPC) are false. Don't believe them.

This is a top performing high compression, actively developed for 13yrs codec with nice GUI.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: dhromed on 2013-01-21 09:12:36
Perhaps [a href='index.php?showtopic=98665']ktf is interested[/a] in this development.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: themanintheshadows_2451 on 2013-01-21 11:31:51
Not surprised about the poor support in foobar2000, though. The foobar2000 devs love giving Monkey's Audio the finger, and haven't given them any respect for a long time. With the crap the devs at Monkey's Audio have pulled over the years, though, it's understandable.


.APE support is handled by a third-party plugin in foobar2000 (not sure why--licensing problems, perhaps?), so it's a little unfair to blame foobar2000 developers themselves.  What about the MA plugin is sub-par, in your opinion?


What about it is subpar? The fact that I can't do a simple transcode of one format to APE (with the current version) without having problems with files not transcoding correctly. This is the first time I've had a a problem with APE transcoding in foobar2000. But, again, what's most troubling to me is simply not being able to see the md5 hash of any APE file in fb2k...which is a first.  The other issues are in my original post.

But let's be clear. I'm not favoring fb2k or the bunch over at MA. I think both are at fault in this matter. One side (the MA devs) have such stupid licensing rules that no real progress can be made without coming from them (Ask the people over at Rarewares who came up with a version of APE that used pipe encoding that never went anywhere because of that), and the other (fb2k) is like "We'll improve that plugin when we feel like getting around to it!" The lines of communication need to be opened up. Maybe then we wouldn't have to wait around for 2 years of more for a 5% improvement in speed. Lots of these issues could've, and should've, been addressed years ago.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Case on 2013-01-21 12:17:46
I just converted three albums (50 files) from FLAC to APE with foobar2000 and had zero problems. The files have their md5 checksums visible in the Properties view and Integrity Verifier also reports all files to be fine. Monkey's Audio decoder doesn't need changes since nothing in the file format has changed.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-01-21 12:20:18
[…] if a component is written by Peter, but exogenous to the program proper, is it still considered "third-party"?

Of course not, since Peter is, by definition, the first party.

The distinction you are talking about is simply one of bundled vs. non-bundled.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: skamp on 2013-01-21 12:40:47
On linux, Monkey's Audio 4.11 (with Wine) is actually very slightly slower than my native linux binary (3.99-u4-b5-s7) when encoding a 746 MiB WAV file (16/44.1, stereo): 39.41 seconds vs. 38.26 seconds.

Edit: with a mobile Core i7, so it should benefit from SSE assembly.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: no404error on 2013-01-21 17:52:51
4.10 > 4.11 = +12-15% on Intel i7-3770 w/o TurboBoost.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: larryfine on 2013-01-21 20:07:34
Thanks for the update. I just convert some albums of classical music and no errors reported. There was a slight improvement in speed but the compression ratio remain the same. Anyway, it's good news, MAC has always been a highly reliable format for storing audio files.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Wombat on 2013-01-21 20:28:50
I got used to ape my few Hires files to store them away. I decided to use it over flac for this a while ago and never looked back. Funny how it becomes more and more usable over time with the processing power increasing. I also like the simple but perfectly working frontend coming with it.

The very most important improvement in 4.11 to me is of course the new icon logo

Thanks!
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Rollin on 2013-01-22 14:33:48
Doesn't work on CPU without SSE2?
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: adamjk on 2013-01-22 17:35:15
Doesn't work on CPU without SSE2?


"Switched from MMX to SSE assembly" it's pure nonsense, as my Pentium III is SSE capable, but the Monkey's Audio 4.11 returns error!
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-01-22 17:36:48
Newsflash: SSE does not necessarily equal SSE2
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Rollin on 2013-01-22 18:02:11
Newsflash: SSE does not necessarily equal SSE2

Yes, thanks, Captain Obvious 
But on my AthlonXP, which doesn't support SSE2, Monkey's Audio 4.11 doesn't work.
So I guess, that Monkey's Audio 4.11 doesn't work on CPU without SSE2. Am I wrong?
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: adamjk on 2013-01-22 18:05:12
Newsflash: SSE does not necessarily equal SSE2


"Lovell: Houston, we've had a problem." with understanding the problem.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: PQR on 2013-01-22 18:07:01
Quote
So I guess, that Monkey's Audio 4.11 doesn't work on CPU without SSE2. Am I wrong?

You're right, new Monkey's Audio have SSE2 as well as SSE.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-01-22 18:30:39
"Lovell: Houston, we've had a problem." with understanding the problem.
Haha, so I did. Thanks to everyone for clarifying the details.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Destroid on 2013-01-23 11:25:08
Quote
Changed: Removed support for old Monkey's Audio 3.92 and earlier files (it hasn't been possible to make these files for over ten years -- use an old copy of Monkey's Audio to convert these files to the latest format if you have any).
This is significant for my own person- and possibly others- but 3.97 and later has been prevalent for long enough that (I suppose) it was inevitable.

{rant} I can not upgrade to this install/release for the reason that the remnants of my APE archives are affected,  but- no matter!.. lossless is lossless. Although it is unlikely older versions of MAC will puke on newer OS's, only time will tell. Yet, I have to mention- so much for backwards compatibility. :/ (This has nothing to do with "open source" and licensing, so those who want to argue can peddle off to another thread for that ongoing philosophy). {/rant}
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: DonP on 2013-01-23 14:25:51
Quote
Changed: Removed support for old Monkey's Audio 3.92 and earlier files (it hasn't been possible to make these files for over ten years -- use an old copy of Monkey's Audio to convert these files to the latest format if you have any).
This is significant for my own person- and possibly others- but 3.97 and later has been prevalent for long enough that (I suppose) it was inevitable.



If you feed it an outdated file does it give you a message what to do, or just reject it silently?

Either way my take home message is to search my drives for ape files and convert to flac while I still can.  Until now I considered them functionally equivalent as archives give or take a bit of compression or CPU efficiency.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: AndyH-ha on 2013-01-29 23:16:22
I can't look on this with any favor. I have many hundreds of hours of work into  "restoring" old LPs, somewhere around 600 albums, all backed up in the 3.92 version. How hard would it have been to include decompression of the older format? Yes, the 3.92 version of MA still runs on 64 bit Win7, but backup is for recovering from disaster ten years from now, when who knows what current programs will run.

All these backups could be converted to the newer version, going through multiple steps involving manual intervention. That would require a large amount of time and effort, one album at a time, most likely. If it were to be done, it would be much more reasonable to convert to FLAC, which hasn't deliberately included such a defect, as far as I know, instead of a newer version of a poorly supported product. This would still require a lot of effort.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: lvqcl on 2013-02-01 16:44:17
Related thread at JRiver forum: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77850.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77850.0)
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: washu on 2013-02-01 16:57:31
As a long time Monkey's audio user I don't like the idea of dropping support for older versions either.  However, it was really simple to get foobar to show me the versions of my APE files and then convert them to a newer version.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-02-01 16:59:59
It’s good that Matt’s considering the issue. I’ll quote the post in case anyone might not click through otherwise:
Quote
The latest APE SDK had this change:
Changed: Removed support for old Monkey's Audio 3.92 and earlier files (it hasn't been possible to make these files for over ten years -- use an old copy of Monkey's Audio to convert these files to the latest format if you have any).

I made the change to make porting Monkey's Audio to OSX easier.  My hope was that the legacy format support code would no longer be needed.

However, I just heard from Jim that several of his files are older than this and won't play.

My guess is that legacy support needs to be added back, at least for Windows.

However, before doing that I would like to understand the scope of issue a little better.  Would users with APE files show the 'Compression' column in Media Center, sort by it, and report the oldest version APE file you have?

Thanks for the help.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: AndyH-ha on 2013-02-01 21:01:03
I don't know what Media Center is but I do know that I started with version 3.92 on Win98 in 2001 and have used it ever since.

Dropping the ability to convert to an older format probably doesn't matter but enticing someone into using your product, then cutting the legs out from under them by stranding years of work in a now inaccessible format, isn't good practice.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: db1989 on 2013-02-01 21:37:36
I don’t know how informative it’ll be for him to collect statistics on proportions of old files from whichever skewed subset of users happen to read that thread… I also don’t know why it apparently came as a surprise to him that someone had such files. I would see the options now to be reinstating support or not, rather than soliciting screenshots for whichever purpose, which doesn’t seem to have much potential use.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: Destroid on 2013-02-06 10:18:06
First off, let me say I am encouraged and admire the posts I will be quoting. Also, I will mention that I was such a fan of Monkey's Audio that it would fair to say I was fanatical (chalk it up to a good codec with a smart package with plugins for WinAmp CoolEdit/Audition and GUI front-end).

If you feed it an outdated file does it give you a message what to do, or just reject it silently?
I imagine it might say, "Unsupported version/format." This is what I encountered when using an old plug-in with a newer file. In my case, updating my plugin solved the issue. In this current context, downgrading the plug-in would be the solution.

I can't look on this with any favor. I have many hundreds of hours of work into  "restoring" old LPs, somewhere around 600 albums, all backed up in the 3.92 version. How hard would it have been to include decompression of the older format?
This is a mystery to me too. Although, I do recall the whole 'source code' issue seemed to exclude versions previous to 3.96 (correct/flame me if I am wrong on this one).

Related thread at JRiver forum: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77850.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=77850.0)
This is interesting: people still using files from 3.60.  My oldest APE files are version 3.87. (UPDATE: Matt posted he plans to restore legacy support to Windows version, so this issue is not really a issue.)

As a long time Monkey's audio user I don't like the idea of dropping support for older versions either.  However, it was really simple to get foobar to show me the versions of my APE files and then convert them to a newer version.
Exactly. I know I can convert losslessly but I might not go from [APE -> APE] given the current situation. Again, I was such a major Monkey's Audio supporter in the past but I gave up using "one codec for all" a while ago. I will still use Monkey's Audio for reasons such as my familiarity with the codec and its plug-ins (Monkey's Audio is one of the few lossless codecs with on-the-fly DLL encoding in EAC), but its place overall in my archives has slipped. However, I also see this latest news only affecting the users who have files prior to 3.97.
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: ktf on 2013-03-21 17:12:10
As I was updating my lossless comparison, I thought there might be people interested in the difference between MAC 4.10 and MAC 4.11. Well, seeing the results, I think it is safe to say there's no real difference in terms of speed or compression. These results is an average, but most differences differ from album to album, except the regression of decoding speed at -c1000, that is visible for most of the tested albums.

http://www.icer.nl/misc_stuff/MAC-4.11-results.pdf (http://www.icer.nl/misc_stuff/MAC-4.11-results.pdf)

For more information on the test method used, see this topic (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=98665).
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: jkauff on 2013-03-22 12:27:39
I don't use MA anymore, but I do have some old files in the old format. They're buried in storage so I haven't tested them, but don't foobar2000 and dbPoweramp still support decoding the old formats?
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: westgroveg on 2013-04-26 03:06:49
Sounds like a ill conceived software release, don't most audio formats strive to expand their compatibility and user base? This is reducing likely future users by limiting CPU compatibility and alienating early adopters of the format
Title: Monkey's Audio 4.11 available, released January 20, 2013
Post by: madoka@ex-sounds on 2013-06-27 22:58:32
Monkey's Audio 4.12 available
URL: http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/)

Changes:
Quote
Version 4.12 (June 26, 2013)
Changed: Numerous fixes for OSX and 64-bit compatibility.