A friend sent me a VQF audio file to see if I could find a program which could play it, or a converter by means of which it could be made playable in another format. I've installed endless VQF players and converters but none of them can process the file. The players mostly give the error message shown below.

The converters don't return error messages but they all fail to process the file. The website quoted in the error message no longer exists, so that's no help. Does anybody happen to know of a program which can play the TwinVQ Version 1 format? Thanks.

Tried Nero?

IIRC It can encode version 1 and version 2, which would imply decoding too.

But VQF is really a very dead format...

I did install Nero but I couldn't get the demo version to run - it kept asking for a serial number. I uninstalled it, but I'll give it another try. Thanks.

[OT]
I know vqf is a very dead and crap (compared to modern codecs) format but i'm wondering - why is it so bad when a quick google search shows the twinvq thingy was at least being considered for mpeg4 audio.

The only reason i'm asking is that it's the codec I used for a while when a noob to this a few years ago, i'm trying to justify the time I spent on that POS
[/OT]

Steve: It probably asked because you've previously installed Nero and the demo period for that has expired.

MPEG TwinVQ wasn't just considered for MPEG 4 Audio, it is a part of it, and considered useful for <16kbps encoding, or thereabouts. Not that anything supports it, though.

But that's something different from VQF.

there are 3 things i know of that support vqf version1

winamp (with a 3rd party plugin, search "in_vqf.dll" [you can search out_vqf.dll too ])

dBpowerAMP, encoding and decoding plugin is in codec central

nero is the only thing i know of that can handle version2 and version1

Well, I installed the Winamp plugin, also dBPowerAmp and dBPowerMix along with the TwinVQ codec, but still no success from any of them. I installed Nero but couldn't find the codec for it so that remains untested.

To be honest though I'd really run out of steam by that time as I have a feeling the file may be corrupted and it's simply unplayable. Thanks for your input, everybody, it's appreciated.

corruption is a possibility

note: one of the vqf plugins on winamp.com doesnt work
http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=19443 <- the good one

Thanks, gameplaya15143, I hadn't seen that particular plugin. I've installed it and the file appears to load into Winamp (it appears in the playlist) but it still doesn't play. One of the user reviews on that page does state specifically that the plugin supports version 1 so I think I have to accept now that the file is corrupted. Thanks again, I appreciate your help.

no problem.. too bad it didn't work for you

Did you try NTT's VQ decoder?
http://www.twinvq.org/english/index_en.html

Yes, thanks, that's one of the many that I tried without success.