I've cobbled together a very crude and minimal gui mpc player for the mac. It doesn't do much but load and play mpc files, but that part seems to work at least.

The very brave can grab a copy of the work in progress from here:

http://www.caddr.com/Xist-20050125.zip

Let me know if it works for you.

A great start, but it skips often on my Powerbook. I'm not sure yet whether it's the decoder eating a lot of CPU (which it seems to do...?) or because of the Powerbook's audio powersaving mode. It definitely does skip when I move windows around. Still, like I said, a great start!

Thanks for trying it out. Once I get a bit more of the basic functionality working I'll see what I can do about optimising it.

I've got a new version up here:

http://www.caddr.com/Xist-20050126.zip

That should hopefully play back a little better. On my G5 it uses roughly as much CPU as iTunes does (3-7%).

You can now select whole directories to play, pause tracks, and skip forward and backward in the playlist.

Awesome. Works quite well now! Soon I'll be rocking out on my PB! Yay!

Cool. Thanks for testing. I'm going to try to add support for a few other formats next I think.

OMG, never expected this to happen.
It's ages ago I wrote off the chance that anyone would create a OS X application for .mpc's

Kuniklo, You Kick Ass !

thanks

Heh I'd like to imagine that mp3 and ogg are going to be the first ones you hit...that and mpc files are what comprises most of my collection but that's just me.

Yeah, AAC's, mp3's and Ogg's would be great

I've been testing it now for a few minutes 10.3.7 / 1.25emac / 512
Hidden:
1.90% - 2.90% according to Activity Monitor

Front app
4% - 6% - few spikes to 8%

No problems reading tags, but it crashes when trying to open a folder with mp3s/aac's that contain a subfolder wih mpc's
Does not save the playlist when closed (but i'm sure you know about this, heh)

This news seriously made my week, hope you choose to add some snazzy added functionality to it once in a while

Layout is great, clean and simple.

edit: Edited the text, removed "no bugs found"

Thanks for testing and the bug reports.

There are a bunch of other bugs you haven't found yet.

Once I get the core really solid and bug-free and get a few other formats implemented I'm hoping to start leveraging Cocoa to do some cool things.

Considering the graphical abilities of OS X, plus the fact that many musicians still rely on Macs for audio work, I can't believe it's taken this long for a good player to pop up. Everyone seems to have given up on audio players for Mac since iTunes, but I find that iTunes is...lacking.

Kuniklo, you've just justified my Mac purchase

That's excellent. All I was trying to do was justify mine.

I think iTunes is so overwhelmingly dominant that nobody's even willing to try to challenge it. iTunes probably is a great solution for the average non-sophisticated user. Personally I don't want something that's a database manager and a player and I really need something that plays other formats besides those that Apple has blessed. Support of some other lossless format than ALAC is especially important I think.

New version up that plays wavpack files as well as musepack files.

From now on all versions will be available from here:

http://www.caddr.com/xist .

Just tried it now on my 500 mhz powerbook g4; it plays files well, but still skips from time to time. Also, this is the 20050127 version that I'm trying, as 20050130 just bounces in the dock once or twice and disappears .

Thanks for testing. I'll see if I can figure out what's up with the newer version.

The 20050130 version should be fixed. Made it statically link to libwavpack.

Drag & Drop now works and I finally relented and switched to brushed metal.

That last build looks really good (nice icon!)

I think I would do something with the playback control buttons, but other than that it has matured quickly.

Thanks! I'll probably change the play buttons to the standard icons instead of text.

The app icon is a temporary but it is pretty cool (pinched from Mark Ryden).

Running Xist-20050131 same emac as previously, no issues,

Running it on a older 466 g4 256mb 10.3.7 runs perfectly fine.
front app: 17% - 19%
hidden: 3-5%, heh, suspiciously low, but the terminal command TOP says about the same.

I should mention that it only skipped once even though I used safari, activity monitor, quicksilver and iTerm. And the time it skipped safari was loading a page with tons of flash crap ads

Looks... different, but well I should rather STFU about the looks, I can't stand the brushed metal look

Only thing i found strange was that the 'very cool' icon didn't show up on my eMac, but fine on a old g4 running exact same system

thanks for the update (using it every day

I don't really like brushed metal much either. I could easily be persuaded to change it back or make it a preference.

As for the skipping, I get occasional skips even on a dual G5, so that's something I need to fix. That and ogg/flac/mp3/aac support are the only things left for a first real release, I think.

Thanks for testing!

any chance of shorten support?

it may need to be library-itized (like you did with wavpack) but a huge gain in the support of the format if a library was available (forward looking)

just my opinion, i guess


later

What advantage do you see in shorten support? Just that it's so widely used? Technically it seems inferior to all the more modern lossless formats.

New version up adds ogg support and should significantly improve dropouts. I haven't been able to make it drop out at all on my G5.

How about Wavpack support?

How about a screenshot?

westgroveg >
i'm sure kuniklo has thought of wavpack since he's ported the format

kuniklo>
yes, it is easily the most popular trading format (not that i enjoy that fact).
it will (most likely) die out some time, but until then there are ...lots of shn files to support.


later

http://www.caddr.com/xist/xist.jpg

May change significantly before a real release.

I'll do it if it's not too hard to integrate. I've got to get mp3 and aac first though.

Wavpack has been supported in Xist for a long time now (days even). It was the second format I supported after MPC

Xist-20050201 crashes when trying to add Ogg's. (both when drag'n'drop and when using the Choose function.

Tried to add: [LJ] Pimsleur's Comprehensive Japanese Level 3 - Lesson 90.ogg
tried to rename to 90.ogg - same

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000

I can add the file, it is listed and tags are read correctly, but after about 1-2 seconds it just bombs out.

If you want the full error dump just say.

One added thing, if there are already MPCs in the playlist, when trying to drag a Ogg to xist, it will clear the playlist, show the Ogg(s) wait 1-2 secs then crash.

You have good taste sir

Does this happen with all the oggs you've tried? It works fine on this end but I only have a few ogg files to test with. If they're not stereo 44k files they might cause problems now too. Are you running this on a G4 or a G5?

I changed the drag & drop behavior of xist to replace the current playlist by default, since that's generally how I tend to listen to music. If you want it to append the new tracks to the playlist just hold down the option key after you start the drag from the finder.

Thanks for testing!

Early Floyd rules, especially Piper.

Thank you so much for this. Sheesh...just got a second hand mac and was worried I would never hear my over 1000 album collection on it with my mpcs. It's working great on my Powerbook G4 550 running 10.3.7. It's lookin good.

Thanks. Working on mp3 support right now. It's surprisingly tricky.

G4
Files are 44.1 / 48bitrate / mono

hmm.. im not sure mp3/aac support is what I would spend too much time on.. Well, perhaps if it is to include encoders (can't get enough lame front-ends!)

I have a lot of MP3 files, so it's pretty useful to me to be able to play them. It looks like I only have to implement one Core Audio decoder and I'll be able to play mp3/aac/wav/alac/aiff all in one component.

20050201 works fine and looks great, and doesn't skip at all during playback either. Thank you for your efforts

Glad to hear it. I've got mp3 playback working now but it does skip on my G5. I think I need to restructure the decoding routines a little bit to prevent this. Thanks!

This looks really great. Thanks for all the work you are putting into it

/me points at lamip and says "hey, look at those cool guys who could use kuniklo (the coding _machine!_ ) in the mix"

Does lamip work on the Mac?

Any new betas to play with?

Sorry. Been distracted by some real life stuff (new dog, birthdays etc). I plan to get back to it soon.

That darn real life just keeps getting in the way, eh?
Many thanks for your work, I'm enjoying using it.

Glad to hear it's been useful. Looks like to get really rock solid playback I'm going to have to rewrite the audio engine as a multithreaded ring buffer sort of thing, which is going to be slightly tricky.

keep it up, we need you!

Any progress?
Would be sad if this app would be filed in the dusty stack of lost-in-found