ABC/HR for Java 0.5a released Options

[schnofler]

I've just released a new version of ABC/HR for Java. You can get it here:

Binary
Sources

You'll need the JRE 1.5 to run this (download here).
To start the application just click the abchr.jar (on Windows) or run "java -jar abchr.jar" on a command line.

Improvements include better sound output routines, a new ABX component in ABC/HR tests and easier test setup (see next post for details).

This post has been edited by schnofler: Mar 24 2005, 10:04

[schnofler]

It has been a while since I released the last version of ABC/HR for Java. I've made small improvements now and then, but until lately never really found the time to polish it up and make it release-worthy. These are the most notable changes:

• Use of low-level sound output. ABC/HR for Java can make use of the native sound playback which was introduced in JRE 1.5. This solves a lot of the problems in previous versions which resulted from the poor performance of Java's software mixer. In particular, latency is reduced, so there are no delays between pressing the play button and actual start of playback, and fast switching will be smoother. Also, the annoying forced volume reduction of Javas software mixer is not present when using hardware mixers.
  The playback device can be set in the Settings dialog.
  
• Training/Testing mode in ABX. The ABX component in ABC/HR tests is now split into a training and a testing mode, as proposed by ff123 (see this thread). In testing mode the results are hidden from the user until (s)he presses the "Finish" button, whereafter no more trials can be added. If the pval after finishing the test is below a certain threshold (which is set in the test config), the respective sample is revealed in ABC/HR mode.
  
• Integrated CLI encoding. This is what I've just implemented recently. Basically, what I'm aiming at in the long run is to make the whole test setup less of a hassle, so that there's really no good excuse not to make a quick blind test when you want to know which codec is better. Integrated CLI processing makes it possible to give something like
  CODE
  SomeSong.ape | sox %i %o trim 0 30>wav | lame -V 4 %i %o>mp3
  as a sample in ABX or ABC/HR tests, meaning "decode SomeSong.ape, pass it through to that sox command line (trimming the sample, keeping only the first 30 seconds), then encode with lame -V 4" (the ">wav" and ">mp3" are the extensions to use on the output file of the respective command line). [Of course, sox, lame, and mac must be in your path or the abchr directory for this to work].
  
• Various stuff. For example, the more detailed ABX logging (including the playback range in the log) that was already present in the special editions used in Roberto's last listening tests. Also, the GUI was redesigned a bit (putting the ABX functionality more to the front, because it's a pretty useful application in itself).

Please note, this has become a pretty complex app, so there are probably some bugs, I didn't catch. I'd be grateful for any feedback.

This post has been edited by schnofler: Mar 6 2005, 18:02

[rjamorim]

Please note, this has become a pretty complex app, so there are probably some bugs, I didn't catch. I'd be grateful for any feedback.

Hehe. Just out of being very mean, I tried to load a config file before running the decoding batch file (I.E, the wavs were not where they should be), and it hung ABC/HR java