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Topic: Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available (Read 15137 times) previous topic - next topic
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Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Download it from:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/files/MAC_398a1_F.exe

New GUI:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/files/MAC_398a1_GUI.rar

History:
1. Changed: Now natively using APE tag version 2 tagging. (updated spec for better streaming and international support)
2. Changed: Using smaller frame sizes with Fast, Normal, and High for faster, smoother seeking.
3. NEW: Added built-in MD5 checking, for super secure, super fast file verification. (requires new alpha GUI for now)
4. Changed: Using a new and improved file header format.
5. NEW: Added "Insane" mode for when compression is all that matters. (may get better in a future version)
7. Changed: Converted everything to Unicode for full international support.

GUI news:
  • full Unicode support
  • few or no dependencies
  • multi-thread friendly -- can process multiple files at once
  • XML based external plugin architecture
  • lots of bugs and unfinished stuff

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #1 –
A quick naive question:  is there already a compile (or compile-ready source) for linux/x86 ?

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #2 –
sounds nice indeed, although I have doubts about that new insane compression mode... decompression time might drop below realtime with my 1.7 Ghz machine
And while MD5 is nice for verification, the file is still lost when there is a small defect.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #3 –
Quote
A quick naive question:  is there already a compile (or compile-ready source) for linux/x86 ?

I suppose you can compile yourself from the sources.

And for foobar2000 users here's decoder that can play files encoded with new version.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #4 –
I just tested the new insane mode on an album. And it didn't offer better compression on any of the files.
Though it of course could be better for other files I'd be suprised if it will be noticeable with any file.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #5 –
A quick decoding speed test:
old "extra high": speed 18.90x
new "insane": speed 7.53x

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #6 –
Quote
Quote
A quick naive question:  is there already a compile (or compile-ready source) for linux/x86 ?

I suppose you can compile yourself from the sources.

The bad thing is still lack of any plugins. What's the use of command line encoder/decoder when you can't play apes and view tags in xmms or some other nice player.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #7 –
Quote
Quote
Quote
A quick naive question:  is there already a compile (or compile-ready source) for linux/x86 ?

I suppose you can compile yourself from the sources.

The bad thing is still lack of any plugins. What's the use of command line encoder/decoder when you can't play apes and view tags in xmms or some other nice player.

  it was release yesterday and it's an alpha version. What did you expect?

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #8 –
I was reffering more to monkey's audio in general than just the latest version. I'm just surprised nobody wrote an xmms plugin so far.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #9 –
Quote
Quote
Quote
A quick naive question:  is there already a compile (or compile-ready source) for linux/x86 ?

I suppose you can compile yourself from the sources.

The bad thing is still lack of any plugins. What's the use of command line encoder/decoder when you can't play apes and view tags in xmms or some other nice player.

That's one of the reasons why I'm about to switch to FLAC.
Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #10 –
The new insane option is really slow... but as long as it's lossless and provides small file sizes I'm satisfied 

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #11 –
Quote
The new insane option is really slow... but as long as it's lossless and provides small file sizes I'm satisfied 

The difference from "extra" to "insane" is so small it's not even funny.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #12 –
even extra high makes smaller files than before. nevertheless i'll wait for the stable version and use 3.97 with extra high. both, extra high and insane are to slow in winamp :/

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #13 –
I was stoked about the insane mode, but my results:

v3.97
Wave: 501 MB
Ape Extra High: 280 MB
Compression Time - 11 Minutes

v3.98a1
Wave: 501 MB
Ape Insane: 280 MB
Compression Time: 30 Minutes 

Same compression, took three times longer.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #14 –
You can't compare these two modes just with one music file. Some music compress beter (classical for example, with silent pasages), some bad (very loud rock/metal music). Test insane mode with differet types of music and then see results.
Also as Matt (author of monkey's audio) said this mode will be tuned in future...

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #15 –
On the other hand...

The new GUI is pretty nice so far. It was easy to configure all my favorite settings for OGG, MPC, APE and LAME. And the Win9x Unicode compatibility means I can actually use it. Very cool indeed!
"Something bothering you, Mister Spock?"

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #16 –
Quote
A quick decoding speed test:
old "extra high": speed 18.90x
new "insane": speed 7.53x

Even using the "extra-high"-mode isn´t worth to do. It takes simply much too much time to en- and decode, while shortening the filesize compared to "high" only up to 1 or 2 percents.
For normal users "high"-mode should be the best compromise between speed and file-size.
My used codecs and settings:
FLAC V1.1.2 -4 / APE V3.99 Update 4 -high / MPC V1.15v --q 5 / LAME V3.97b2 -V2 --vbr-new / OGG aoTuV V4.51 Lancer -q5

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #17 –
Preliminary results:
3 24-bit wav files: 118mb

extra high 39.7: 75 mb
insane 3.98: 76.5 mb

3 16-bit wav files: 80mb

extra high 3.97: 46.6 mb
insane 3.98: 46.2 mb

all wave files self-produced music.

cpu usage was hard to gauge because fb2k seemed to be influenced by other programs I had opened and fluctuated anywhere from 0% to 45%.  Insane does seem about 0.5x the decoding speed of extra high though.  Encoding speed is ALOT slower.

Regardless, its nice to see some development for MA.  If Matt can squeeze a few more % out of insane I would personally use it regardless of the speed.
 

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #18 –
Another preliminary for my 7 albums (see also www link below):

% compression for: 3.97 extra high - 3.98a1 insane - Album abbreviation
42,22 - 41,74 - Titanic
45,11 - 44,89 - Gema
47,04 - 46,61 - Fleetwood
52,63 - 52,43 - Aphex
62,74 - 62,64 - Trance
64,06 - 63,67 - Platina
69,20 - 68,83 - Steve
54,72 - 54,40 - Average of all 7 albums.

Both compression and decompression speed was about 3.8...4.0 which is about 3 times slower as 3.97 extra high.

This makes insane comparable with optimfrog's 'extra' mode, both compression- and speedwize. I expected insane mode to blow away the competition, but it's not that bad either...

I'll wait with adding this to the graphs, since this is still alpha and things might change sooner now.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #19 –
Quote
This makes insane comparable with optimfrog's 'extra' mode, both compression- and speedwize. I expected insane mode to blow away the competition, but it's not that bad either...


Well, that what you expected is nearly impossible. It's lossless compression and there's not much to do. IMHO lossless compression is reaching its all abilities.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #20 –
Quote
Well, that what you expected is nearly impossible. It's lossless compression and there's not much to do. IMHO lossless compression is reaching its all abilities.

I agree.

And I'd say it is more important to implement an option of adding some redundant recovery data to files and multi OS support.

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #21 –
I know all that, but I just expected insane at least end up below the line: ape (extra high) - la (default).

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #22 –
I couldn't help but notice that the only way I can get 3.98a to encode is using the new GUI. Commandline keeps saying Iput File Not Found and old GUI reports I/O error every time. I suspect this is APE tag 2 related from running on Win9x. But I had to see if anyone noticed this prob too (Monkey's forum won't let me stay logged-in for some weird reason).
"Something bothering you, Mister Spock?"

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #23 –
Same pbm. Win98SE + old GUI + new MAC.EXE = I/O error

Other problem :
I can't display FILE INFO on explorer, or with Winamp in_mac.exe. Nevertheless, winamp can read APEv2 tags created with foobar2000 : the informations are reported on the playlist, but not on the info box (which doesn't appear at all).

Monkey's Audio 3.98 ALPHA1 Available

Reply #24 –
Quote
quruboolez wrote: I can't display FILE INFO on explorer, or with Winamp in_mac.exe. Nevertheless, winamp can read APEv2 tags created with foobar2000 : the informations are reported on the playlist, but not on the info box (which doesn't appear at all).


It's because winamp plugins and other stuff need to be recompiled with new SDK. Case updated his plugin for foobar2000 and everything works fine!