The normal copy right laws do not give you right to copy the code without an explicit license, so it cannot be either used or viewed by us.

Frank can give you permission to redistribute the code in unmodified form if he prefers to keep it close.

Just use the MS Shared Code Source license

The donation will end this Saturday (February the 21st). The PayPal button will be removed. The pending bank transfer donations will still be accepted then, but only if you arranged it with me before the donation ended. So please don't send me a message on Sunday that you still want to donate via bank transfer, this won't be possible.

I was curious when everything is said and done and the PC is bought, can you list the complete specs of the machine that Frank is getting? I am curious what kind of Beast system he will be receiving

On a side note, I'm pretty impressed with everyone's thoughtfulness to donate money to PC. Go HA!

Long live MPC!


--Grant

One person donated via bank transfer with this text:

"DONATION BY [...] ON THE CONDITION THAT
FRANK GETS LINUX COMPATIBLE
HARDWARE NO ATI, NO CREATIVE, ETC"

I'm not sure who it was, might be that your PM to me was under a different nickname. You need to know that we already settled on an ATI card, which has good Linux support by the way. ATI provide their own Linux drivers. So it's surely "compatible". Also, i think Frank knows best what hardware he needs, there is no need to set conditions like that. But we could gladly accept your donation and use it explicitly to partly pay for another component, like the case or PSU. Please contact me again privately about this.

General eMail handling

I would suggest to use a unique naming scheme for email addresses of people
who want or may want to actively support matroska/musepack/related work
development.

Email addresses are changing from time to time, old email addresses become
invaldi or - more worse - will not be read anymore.

Idea is that a person XXX has a simple to built email address in the following
manner:

XXX @ STANDARDDOMAIN

A person with a nickname / forum name "XXX YYY" has the email address

XXX . YYY @ STANDARDDOMAIN

Proposals for such standard domains:
- hydrogenaudio.org
- matroska.org

By the way, dev0 split the thread, Sample Database discussion is now in this thread.

Also, this is the last chance to donate. The donation will end tomorrow, only the pending donations will be accepted after that.

What about

@musepack.org ?

I was asking on the MPC-general mailing lists who the owner of this domaine is currently, but got no response ( as usual ) ......

i believe it is spase who owns musepack.org

...now a dead site

rip

We should start another discussion regarding the reorganization of the Musepack project. This would include finding maintainers for PlugIns, getting an overlook over the current codebase (the situation is really confusing right now) and a general future outlook.

It was me. I hadn't registered on this board until today, so that's why you couldn't find my nick, I guess



In fact, there are at least three different driver sets for ATI in X11 (plus framebuffer drivers, plus VESA/VGA). Too bad that none of the drivers are actually any good, really.

Trust me -- I have ATI hardware in most of my computers, ranging from ancient Mach64 to Mobility M6, R7000 and other new devices up to R9700/R9800 (all boxes are running Linux, of course).

Most people prefer the ATI binary drivers, because they are the only ones you can actually play 3D games on (the DRI open-source drivers support OpenGL acceleration as well, but the support is lacking so many features and so much speed that nobody uses it for anything but glxgears).

ATI binary drivers (fglrx) on the other hand are very buggy... Try to switch virtual console and your X dies. Try to use palette-based colors in SDL (Linux port of Duke3D being my favorite example of this) and some color will suddenly turn transparent (you will see the desktop thru it). Try running dosbox (which is a really great PC emulator that can be used for running nearly all old DOS software and games) in full screen - it dies and your desktop is left in wrong display mode. And yes, there are even more problems, even in 2D (I don't want to discuss the 3D bugs or speed issues here).

(okay, granted: some of these issues might have their roots in buggy programs as well, but at least they never surface on other hardware or other drivers)

Oh, and yes -- ATI is aware of all these problems, but I guess it just ain't on their priority list to fix bugs on Linux drivers (oddly enough it seems like they don't care much about bugs in Windows drivers either, though).

Many people say nVidia has better drivers and some people say that nVidia's drivers suck (usually the argument here being that they are closed-source). And then there are people who claim that Matrox has good drivers (but they don't have sanely priced hardware). I personally don't have any idea on other manufacturers' support, as I haven't used their modern hardware.

However, I will take back that "condition" that no ATI hardware must be used, if Frank will decide to stick to Linux even though he will have some serious GFX trouble... With such a talented coder getting stuck with stupid problems every day, on his own computer, we might actually get useful ATI drivers some day (once he gets frustrated enough and begins working on the drivers, that is)

(ATI - unlike nVidia - at least gives out some hardware specs, so the good open-source drivers might possibly become reality some day)

Ps. Gentoo package.mask denies installing fglrx 3.7.0 (which is the very same version ATI supplies as the "latest" on their website):

# <lu_zero@gentoo.org> (06 Jan 2004)
# Has memory leak issue
=media-video/ati-drivers-3.7.0

Get the man a cheap dualhead Matrox card

Linux drivers for the G450 are quite mature and stable. Of course 3D performance is horrid, but that probably doesn't matter to Frank. At least image quality is excellent.

Thanks for your clarification, Tronic, i will add your donation to the list.

To Garf: Frank did several tests with Matrox cards and the results weren't so good...

- The G450 has no DVI-D/I (I have no flat panel, but may be at the end of this year)

- memory bandwidth problems when using dual head configurations
(1280 x 1024 x 32 @85 + 1280 x 1024 x 32 @75 is the last mode which works [with the right drivers])

- problems with overlay functionality (Frame grabber [even Matrox frame grabbers], TV cards, DVD playback)

- never combine hardware from different epochs, otherwise you are entering lousy tested combinations

- I wrote Citay a letter about my experiences about what should be avoided to get a stable system. Short summary:
-- avoid configurations which are not usual (this starts with P4/2.0 + Win2000)
-- avoid software and hardware combinations which are not in the focus of developers (Linux Kernel 2.2.20 crashs with a kernel panic on my current motherboard)
-- this is independent from the OS (There are enough examples for Windows and Linux)

The G100/200/450 were usual combinations in 1997/98/99, some XFree86
developers had this card in their own computers. Matrox published the
knowledge the XFree86 developers needed. This is the reason, why
at the end of the last decade Matrox cards were really a good choice.
But this is the past. Currently >90% of the graphics cards are from ATI, NVidia
and Intel.

Spase = pumpkinz99 = Erik Ramseth
email: pumpkinz99 <at> aol.com, space <at> outerspase.net
TZ: -0500+DST
owned: http://musepack.org/, http://mpegplus.outerspase.net/, http://www.musepack-source.de/

The current plans are:

- Encoder and Decoder are modular

- Interfaces between modules are DOCUMENTED (but I also need help to do this)

- Each module will be at least licenced by the terms of the L-GPL, other licences may be possible on request

- There will be at least an additional licence to support derived work (integer decoder for example) in mobile devices.

Matroska/Musepack is a primary aim, but never forget, high quality/high comfort music encoding
is the more general aim.

I was trying to do exactly this on the MPC mailing lists recently, and although i know all of the people who are interested in MPC are subscribed there, it seems to be too difficult for them to get used to using mailing lists.

Even Frank, who was moning about webboards all the time, is letting me down now and doesnt reply to the list at all

Believe me guys, i have some experience with running a project like this, and you cant center a project easily around a webboard. Too many developers from the outside, like app devs, etc. will simply refuse to post on a webboard if they need information to support MPC, they will request a list.

The Gmane NNTP interface makes using of mailing lists quite convenient IMO, its just like a webboard in use, but you can easily save the complete discussion of a whole week on the HDD of your laptop if you leave for the weekend, and answer stuff. Try doing this with a webboard .....

In short : First of all, we should make a decision about where the official musepack 'communication' should be taking place. Although i love HA.org, i vote for the lists, speaking from experience. Frank's voice should have a lot of weight here IMO .....

In other words: "Thanks for bringing Frank back with the donations from HA members! But now: Bye bye!"

Well, seriously speaking, we gotta admit the fact that Frank doesn't like webboards so the most logical thing is that official communication takes place on mailing lists which are already there. Though it would be good if there was a web-interface for the mailing list for web-users.
m2f just went public beta and it should work with phpBB. Also CM2F is similar mailing list - web -interface for phpBB.
It would leave HA pretty much out of the MPC scene, but for the format it would be best if there's a concentraded place which the developer and masses like (both mailing list and web-interface).
I hope sometime in the future someone has time to port m2f for IPB so that HA can have the interface to the mailing list too. Logically thinking it would be the best to close HA MPC sections and forward all MPC traffic to the phpBB-forum on CoreCodec server as long as there's no IPB-mailing list interface. That way the MPC discussion would remain very concentraded to one place, and MPC users (and Frank) wouldn't need to read messages in several places.

I would just like to say to Frank that you will be using my soundcard, which I will be shipping to Germany in a matter of 12 hours or so. It uses the Cirrus Logic SoundFusion CS4624 DSP. I should hope this is adequate, quality wise, for your needs. It is the Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 in case you were wondering.

To be honest, i am not sure anymore if this is actually the case. He reluctantly refuses to use the mailing list . Hopefully he finds the time to clarify how we should proceed here.

... dont swob things here ! User interaction should be via the webboard, only developer/contributor internal communication should be directed to the ML !
matroska does it exactly that way, users can turn to our webboard, while the devs discuss most internal stuff on the ML.

... yes, a mail-to-webboard or NNTP-to-webboard interface would be really nice, i am waiting for this for a long time. Nobody has enough time to post interesting technical matters twice, to the forums and the ML, so one of the two gets constantly left behind. For the matroska webforum on corecodec.com, for this reason its looking a bit like there is no progress with matroska, as there are not many interesting posts.

As i got requests about the NNTP interface again, here is how to do it :

Point your newsreader to news.gmane.org and subscribe to all groups starting with gmane.comp.audio.mpc.xxx ... quite easy ....

Even easier: http://news.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=gmane.comp.audio.mpc

It uses the Cirrus Logic SoundFusion CS4624 DSP. I should hope this is adequate, quality wise, for your needs. It is the Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 in case you were wondering.

I read in specs, that this soundcard has opt. dig in & out, which is very fine.
The sampling freq. is up to 48 kHz.
it has 20 bit at out, 18 bit at inputs.

I dunno, if this soundcard isn't too limited for developemnt purposes, though. Wouldn't be 96 kHz, 24 bit capable soundcard better for dev. purposes ?

And what's about the upsampling issues like Soundblasters ?
Does somebody know, if at least this Hercules soundcard is able to output 44.1 kHz at dig. out without upsampled 48 KHz ?

But there's "users" mailing list section. Imo this should be the primary place for user interaction, because Frank can follow it easily since it's a mailing list. Of course it needs a web-interface which should be now easily possible to install for phpBB.

Thats not the same. The NNTP works both ways, reading and sending, an as already stated with newgroups you can easily download all of the threads in one go, and read them offline ....

just curious.. now that mpc code has been added to corecodec.. isnt it about time to update mpc.corecodec.org ? the coming soon.. message annoys me

The donation has ended!

A huge thank you to everyone who donated! When we thought about setting up a donation, we weren't sure that we would ever reach the original limit of 1150 Euros. We thought that if we would ever collect the necessary amount of money, it would take 2 or 3 weeks at the very least. But on the first three days you already proved us wrong, we received lots of donations and eventually reached the limit in no time. The level of support was unbelievable. On the last few days, we still reveived PayPal donations and also received a couple of bank donations, pushing the status bar to a stunning 150+% above to the original limit.

There were some very generous donations, but it's not the most important thing who donated what. No matter how much you put in, you showed your support and appreciation, and we thank you wholeheartedly for that. Over the last couple of days, i've been in steady contact with Frank Klemm, and i'm discussing every detail with him to make sure the new PC fits his every needs and he can just put it to good use from the beginning. We will now start ordering the hardware for a PC which won't require compromises anymore. Watch this thread for updates about the PC.

Again, thank you so much to everyone who donated and everyone who supported this idea. We are glad that we can help Frank like this now and prove that his work is really appreciated. It's a great day for MPC.

I was one of those who laughed at the idea.
I still cannot believe that what the developer needed was a brand new free PC to crank some new code.
This will be one of the things that will stand out in codec history in both a good and bad manner IMHO.

Well, Frank didn't request anything like that. ChristianHJW had the idea to start this donation as a way of "giving back" and showing him that we care. That he will also be able to be productive with a new PC that's freshly installed again, yes, you can call that a deliberate side-effect.

Frank. Enjoy your brand new PC. We all did it because this is the least we can do for this great format (MPC) and we all love you. I remember, since I tried Mpc. I never went back to anything else. We would like to thank all your working hours, and more important, the time of your live devoted to MPC and us, that wont come back. We appreciate that, and all you do for the past, the present and the future of MPC!. Period!

Now let's start a donation for the LAME, Vorbis, AAC and other developers, so they can get a new PC to develop on also (and some new inspiration maybe)

Internal sampling is much higher, 96khz, as with every AC97 compliant sound card I've seen as of recent. It can output 44.1 khz, so no probs there. As for the sampling issues with SB Lives, that is an inherent flaw in the DSP, to the best of my knowledge. The optical outputs are AC-3 passthroughs, and I know it doesn't have hardware accelerated outputs for them, they are pretty much at the mercy of software driving them.

Indeed.

It seems I no longer own musepack.org.... http://www.pir.org/whois_search/


I pretty much just forgot to renew the domain and now it's gone.

Odd...

Yes I still own outerspase.net, but I never owned musepack-source.de

The AOL email address is no longer valid really... I never use it.

spase <AT> outerspase.net or ramseth <AT> umd.edu (both end up in the same inbox).

Anyways let me know if I can be of assistance in some way (as far as web design, admin, etc.)

This is going a bit off-topic, but a good friend of mine said something about ATI I thought I should post here:

if ( ((ATI GFX) && (LINUX)) || (ATI AIW)) TroublesAhead();
if (ATI AIW) SwitchDriversForDifferentUse();
if ((ATI GFX) && (LINUX) && (AMD64)) NoGoIn3D();
if ((ATI GFX) && (!ATI AIW) ShouldBePrettyOK();
if ((ATI GFX) && (MULTIMON)) OK(BusinessTrue, GamingNoGo, MixedUseWith3rdPartySW);
if (((ATIGFX) && (Gaming)) && (ATITYPE =>9500)) Great(ExcludeMinority);

I think I found another forum where FK has quite some posts too. I could be wrong but judging from the knowledge this user has (and the name of course) it must be him. Its the forum of the german loudspeaker factory Nubert:
http://www.nuforum.de/nuforum/viewtopic.php?p=9227#9227

Aww and he's a "star"...how cute!

@ CiTay --> back to pc stuff:

i think its a good idea if you buy to equal HDs
and run them with RAID 1 (mirroring) because
i think that a headcrash or something won't be
good for development .
than you don't have to think about backup everything etc.

Yeah, but he'll get a DVD burner to make backups with.

but that will just produce more noise for a hypothetical recovery...

(edit : about the double HD)

IMO the best for backup is a FireWire HD...

Update:

After some longer discussions with Frank, all parts were ordered and have arrived by now. Even Vertigo's donation, the Hercules Fortissimo III soundcard, is here now. I'm currently silencing the case and then i'll assemble all the parts. I'll also do some tests with different fan combinations and voltages later on, to achieve the best cooling at the lowest noise level. Finally i'll go about installing Windows XP and SuSE Linux, and configuring everything according to Frank's needs (i even have a detailed partitioning list, the guy's a perfectionist ). By the way, the PC can't be delivered to Frank before ~ March 18th (2 weeks from now), because both Christian and Frank will be away for a few days until then. I'll keep you posted about further developments.

Can you upload pictures of the hardware CiTay? I want to see all the dope gear .

I will put up some pictures when it's far enough that you can recognize a PC... right now, stuff is still scattered all around the room, so there's not much to see yet.

Perhaps the separate parts is what he (and probably some others) would like to see. What's there to see if you hide all the important parts inside the case?

I'll go skiing with my family !!!

Dont even think of stealing my snow, just so that the PC will arrive earlier at Frank, because he wont be here also during that time .....

Yes, pics please, or else I call shens

Pics coming very soon...

May i present to you, Frank Klemm's new PC!

Without thumbnails (all on one page)

With thumbnails

I did many tests on how to achieve the lowest temps and the most silent operation. The temps are fine now and the noise is so low that i can hear my monitor. Yes, there's a slight hum coming from my monitor! When my own PC is running too, i can't hear when i turn this PC off or on. I have to look for the LEDs on the front. It has a defined airflow from the front intake to the back exhaust fan, both are regulated and on low-voltage. The CPU fan also has a lowered voltage and is regulated with a safeguard temp where the fan goes to a higher speed (would only activate in a very hot summer).

I did hours of stability test and function tests. It does everything to my full satisfaction, at high speeds. I already installed Windows XP. It will be configured and then the same will be done with SuSE Linux 9.

wow.. it looks like the shizzle bomb.. Awasome job.. where did you get the black sound dampening material that lines the inner sides of the case? just curious..

and you gonna take more pics when you deliver the puter to Frank?

Thanks. That material is from a german webshop that specializes on low-noise PCs. There should be shops like that in other countries too.



Yes there will be more pics.


You might be wondering why his PC has a CD burner, if the DVD burner can burn CDs too. Well, Frank had that burner lying around and he sent it to me. I've talked about all the hardware with Frank for many days and this is what came out of that. And yes, it has 640 GB of hard disk space.

Some more data: The PC weighs a good 25 kilograms now. There isn't any vibration or mechanical instability anymore. The silenced front door greatly reduces CD/DVD reading noise. Front LEDs are blue and red and can be seen with the door closed. The PSU continues to power the fans for 3 minutes with low voltage after the PC has been turned off. The motherboard is an ABIT IC7-G.

Ok, now I want to see some bechmarks.