The last article in the mpc forums is from July 1st. This is more than dead.

Isn't it time to remove the direct links to mpc forums? mpc is like a dead limb in ha.

Well, I'm not a mpc fan, but as it's still a very good codec: why bury it?

If mpc doesn't produce a lot of interest any more: it's like that, just natural not to see a lot of posts about it. Shouldn't bother people with other interests. Much better than those situations we see from time to time here on HA where a lot of posts are coming out for more popular codecs but on issues and with a quality which are quite questionable sometimes.

Yeah I agree. Maybe the lack of comments isn't just due to lack of support, but also due to the fact it just works. I don't have any incompatibility between different MPC decoders like AAC does for example. I've been hoarding single file FLAC CD rips for ages waiting to find a more modern codec to encode them with but i'm going to use MPC instead as it just works.

I guess that the original demand isn't to forbid any discussion about muepack but to remove two forums that are now totally deserted. MPC format was very active in the beginning of HA.org, with heavy development (thanks to Frank Klemm) and a growing community of users. Activity on forums about MPC was very intense, on par with MP3, Vorbis and even bigger than for AAC.

Nowadays it's very different. MPC has no developer anymore, less and less users on this board (from 35% of HA community in the first poll to 12% in the most recent one) and no reactivity at all. Posting an issue with the format becomes pointless because nothing changes in fact.

The situation has therefore completely change since HA.org beginning and the original organisation of the different forums. In this new context having two forums dedicated to this format looks overkill. There are more questions and threads about flac or wavpack in one week than threads posted on HA about MPC in 6 months. But there's only one forum for all lossless formats but two for the lone MPC. How relevant is this?

I'm also partisan to reorganize a bit the forums organisation. The place for new MPC discussions belongs to "other audio codecs", among atrac, wma and other less-popular formats on HA.org.
The lossless forum could eventually be divided into three categories: two for the most popular ones in this board (FLAC and WAVPACK) and a third one for all other lossless formats.


@halb27> MPC debates are not very always high quality ones. Ad the part of "questionable" threads is proportionaly as big for mpc than for other formats (look on first page of each mpc forums and count the "moved topics", and the productive ones like "amazing speed", "no more MPC", "after the PC donation", various transcoding questions, etc...

I'm not sure if one month of inactivity is enough to warrant removal of a forum. What is the rush to proclaim it dead? If it remains inactive till the end of the year, perhaps that is the time to start thinking about such measures.

The problem is old. Look on MPC-TECH forum for example. On the first page you can see all messages from year 2006, plus all ones from year 2005, plus few months of 2004. The twenty last months are present in the first page... Now go on the beginning of MPC-TECH forums and count how many pages you must browse to see the twenty first months of activity. Answer is... seven pages.
The situation is only slightly less dramatic for the second MPC forum. Recent (understand: the two last years) activity about MPC on this board is strongly less intense compared to the beginning (which should be characterized by much less users than in 2006, no?). This situation is unique to MPC; all other formats having dedicated forum(s) know a much intense activity.

For comparison, take a look on the amount of new threads in the LOSSLESS forum. 1st page = 10 days of activity. MPC-TECH: 1st page = 600 days of activity (or 20 months).
FLAC has now two developing branchs (CVS and flake) but no dedicated forum whereas MPC has no development branch anymore but two forums


This situation is not new; it simply going worse months after months (musepack.net is exactly in the same situation).

I'm not against Flac and Wavpack getting their own forums.

But if the forums get a clean-up I suggest looking at the Digital A/V forums too, there the situation is worse than for MPC.

I was about to post this argument too, but I verified it first and the A/V section appeared to know a decent activity. At least the GENERAL forum:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....amp;s=&f=53

It's definitely much more active than MPC forums.


N.B. But I wouldn't cry if all the A/V forums would be merged into a unique one (or maybe two).

yes, well it seems like HA video section is a place for refugees from doom9 or from people who didnt find doom9 yet, so i agree, merging is in place imho.

I see. That's a good point.
So maybe it's the best option to have mpc related posters use the 'other codec section' as you proposed.

The MPC forum will stay, it's a good resource or... archive? However, i merged the two subsections into one general section.

I also merged some of the video forums into General A/V.

I would even think about (maybe by the end of the year) merging mpc to the "other codecs" section, leaving the two stickied topics intact...

there's no need for any sentiment

mpc is good, was usable, lacks development, is dead

easy, don't make it complicated

Booo... a primitive anti-musepack zealot!! Don't you know that "Musepack use and support hasn't been declining, but only rising. People that have so "articulately" been arguing that Musepack is bad because of this and that, can today do flips and flops when they hear things like you can play MPC files on iRiver, iPod, and various platforms." ?

It comes from a "developer", posted recently on a zealot-free forum (by opposition to HA.org which is "filled by trolls").
Source (and full reply): here.
It contains the most priceless nostradamus-like claim I ever read from a self-proclaimed "developer":

"Musepack will always come first, because it is as good and better than the others." (author: Shy).

Anyway, he gave a good argument against including MPC in any future listening tests: if it will always be the best, what's the point of testing it

Finally, it's not the MPC forums that should be closed but all other ones because competition is doomed to stay behind a format which isn't developed since 2003. Logic, no?

I completely agree.

I like what CiTay did with the MPC section, and yes the Lossless codecs section needs subsections for the big players, with stickys and FAQ's and recommendations and the like.

as usually, you let my knowladge grow

LOL @ Guru. I received quite the beating in that thread.

I subscribe to the WavPack and FLAC forums idea.

You can do what you want with the forum.

But sayin' that MPC is dead???
I encode all my music in MPC since 2002.
First in q5 quality then q6.

Many people use this codec because it's the best choice to quality/bitrate.
Maybe development is dead but not the format.

That's all I wanted to say.

I hope that since 2002 you took the time to read hydrogenaudio TOS, especially the 8th one. Or if you have your own interesting listening tests, do forget to share them

If there is no development done inside or around a format, no new users, then of course the format is dying. There are still people using it, but those are old users, not new ones.

(there are probably a few people still using vqf)

I look at the forum once a day. So I read all I want to read.

Tests?
Comparing MPC q5, MPC q6, Lame MP3 standard done in 2004:
MP3 - Too much bass in headphones, speakers make strange noises when deep bass is played.
MPC q5 - Everything beautiful but...
MPC q6 - Stereo effect is wider, compared to WAV I couldn't see the differences.

Tested on trance music and Clannad - Herne.
If this codes suits me why search other.

//End of my OT

You are not a new member so you know that your personal opinion (including wider stereo, colourful frequency range and the like) means nothing without ABX results. Got any to share? If not, refrain from posting and stick to whatever fits you best. thankyou.

well, probably you would "hear" the differences

So if q6 have a "wider stereo effect" it logically implies that q5 (aka --preset standard, reputed as fully transparent) has a limited stereo coding. It's a unusually rare artefact for 180 kbps encodings, and the most weird thing is that "the best" lossy format is concerned by this. I wonder how horrible must sound Vorbis or AAC which both have poorer "quality/bitrate performance"; they probably turn everything into mono...

Another interesting point is that LAME have too much bass. It changes from people complaining about lack of bass of MP3 or any various coding formats.

Last interesting point is that someone obviously interested to find out the best lossy format missed to perform fresh listening in the last two years and even more strangely forgot to include AAC and Vorbis in the comparison. So to sum up: you compared in 2004 LAME and MPC and two years after (after several LAME updates) you're claiming that MPC is still the best thing.

May I advice you to perform again a comparison, including this time AAC, Vorbis, latest LAME, maybe WMAPro, with ABC/HR in order to make blind evaluation - and then to come back on this board to confirm that MPC is still on top? Thanks

Coincidentally I ditched MPC from my library just yesterday. I've started encoding most of my music in MPC, especially live albums (gapless playback). More than half of my music was in MPC. I finally jumped the boat and had re-ripped all my CDs to MP3 (was doing it 9 hours straight). It's completely for personal reasons. I haven't seen development progress, dependency on some players (although I use foobar2000)...and various reasons. MPC was the topic on HA a few years ago. That's what made me use it. But LAME has progressed a lot since then and the reasons I used MPC for are no longer there since LAME does it perfectly.

Although I'm not frequent poster here...I do read forums daily. I would also like to see separate forums for FLAC/Wavepack, and MPC forum merged into other codecs. However, that's just what I think. I haven't read anything "exciting" on MPC in ages. Most discussions (that I noticed) are lossless related and forum should thrive in directions user wish. Times change, preferences change....forums evolve.

hows that new PC going?

what is going on with musepack?

usability (decoding libraries, plugins, etc) are being supported/developed by the MDT

that's it.

a few other ideas/projects are slowly being worked on (seeking/etc) but nothing to write home about...

musepack will always have a user base due to the 1,000's of GB of musepack audio files out there...

calling it dead is inaccurate. calling it dormant is more than true. the format isn't abandoned.

the thread-of-the-week-proclaiming-musepack-dead just isn't adding anything new to the situation.


later

It's a bit off-topic, but if lucid anti-mpc zealots want to have a little fun, here's another hilarious claim coming from the musepack.net circus board.


source

The MPC "developer" explicitely ask to not discuss about "competition with other codecs", but four lines after his own disclaimer -- ding! -- a clear statement about... MPC superiority over competitors. Superiority at 176 (wow, that is precise) kbps, precisely where complete listening tests are missing... and this guy blames the few members of this board for their "professional analysis".

But this is just a snack. The big one is coming just after :

3. If you think Musepack is "losing" anything, all the statistics such as the tens of thousands of new visitors to our site each month, increasing usage and discussion of the format all over by users satisfied by the format's top quality, many major companies' interest in our files, Musepack being the top pick other than the popular MP3 according to a Hydrogenaudio survey, being supported by popular software on every possible widely used (and some not so widely used) platform and gaining further support by many unique and new applications, etc, shows otherwise.

(I recall that this message was posted less than one year ago).

• "increase discussion of the format": may I recall why this topic was started? Note that the last message posted on musepack.net is also more than one month old: current activity is even lower than on HA.org MPC boards!
• "many major companies interest in our files": too bad that he forgot to name these "big companies". We can't mail them to recall them to support MPC
• "...on top (...) according to a Hydrogenaudio survey": here is the lastest poll, MPC is in fourth position, with 11% of use, very far from Vorbis (and MP3 of course). And to finish, a last indicator of MPC growing interest
• "being supported by popular software on every possible widely used": no, MPC is supported in popular softwares, and not by them. The compatibility is most often coming from third-party components; native support of MPC is very rare.


Priceless, isn't it ?


____

seeking? That's indeed a great project! But didn't you consider seeking as useless


Ah, I see... so MPC is basically attractive for illegal usage? That's indeed a great argument in favor of keeping MPC boards on HA.org.


No, but quality improvement (precisely for what people were looking about when they choose to leave MP3 for an exotic format) is more than dormant I would say.


Yes, it did: it contributed to clean HA.org board a bit in the last hours Finally, MPC is still useful for something else than P2P

You mean Frank Klemm PC donation?

i'm not sure why you bother...


i don't care about seeking, personally. i'm still not sure why that matters...


no. just like every other format doesn't exist solely for illegal usage. i have about 100GB of legal live music in musepack format, for instance - but thanks for another obviously ignorant point.


you aren't adding anything new here... everyone can see (musepack is open source now) that the psymodel isn't evolving. those same people can see that usability is evolving (especially for *NIX). how you can make those well-understood ideas an argument is interesting.


contribution? ok... if by that you mean "less-organized in a streamlined sort of way..." honestly, i don't think it will matter either way. i'd always support being more organized. that's just how i am. but i'm not going to argue about it.

i can see as everyone else can that musepack isn't an active topic here any more.


later

guruboolez, assuming MPC is dead, then you're a necrophiliac. Don't make me close the thread, guys.

From Shy, indeed... Or is it for me?


100 GB? And where are the 900 other GB of legal MPC that are supposed to be here to prove that MPC "isn't dead"? Where could people find them?


Building support for Commodore 64 and Atari ST is not exactly the kind of argument users are waiting for.
BTW, no need watch the source to see that MPC isn't progressing. VQF is still closed source and everyone can guess that the format is dead.


@CiTay: What I love isn't MPC but respect for other people. Seeing some "influent" person fooling other people with rotten arguments (superior quality at high bitrate without any proof, superior performance of transcoding based anything but listening test, claim abouts "big companies" imminent MPC' support, claims about growing audience of the format, fog with SV8, or SV7.5, etc...) is going against this respect. HA.org was originally intended to be as scientific or objective as possible. Whatever the format, as long as mythologic arguments will be posted on this board, I will continue to fight them to my best of my ability and my knowledge. As administrator with moderating right, it is also your duty.

What I did is to post some example of the way people involved in MPC developement are thinking (and acting). With such guys supposed to improve the format, it's easy to guess that MPC won't progress anymore and will only survive by trying to maintain an "audiophile superiority" aura obtained somewhere during 2000 and 2001 and objectively lost in the meantime. Such attitude could only fool new and uninformed users. There's no place for marketing on this board - even if it comes from an open-source software.

Scarily coherent.

well just to be precise, it was me who said that mpc is dead.. so it would be more accurate to call myself the necrophiliac but..
if I want to be less offtopic I would say.. don't complicate things.. we all know, that using mpc leads nowhere nowdays, so why bother with MPC forum when no one really needs it?
But of course you're an admin here.. do what you please with it.. I don't really care, just wanted to be little practical

you are not obligated to read the MPC forum, you know?

and do you read it ?

The quotes you posted here come from a different forum. I can understand when you vigorously fight certain cloudy statements, since you apply academic measures to it just like it should be. What i find strange is the effort you put in, gathering statistics about forum section usage and so on. Thanks for the suggestions about the forums, as i said i merged the two subsections and that will be enough for now. I like to keep it as such to simplify browsing for now. Maybe those topics will be mass-moved at some point.

P.S. With Necrophiliac i meant someone who rapes something that is "dead".

I think Guru's mission is a valid and noble one. Until there's a public listening test at ~192 kbps (and I don't mean soundexpert as this seems to deliver results opposite of traditional testing so its validity is questionable, especially when considering how it wreaks havoc on the psymodels) or even 128 kbps that includes MPC, it would seem that a handful of format fanatics (and seemingly influential ones in the MPC dev scene) are destined to live in the past glory of MPC's superiority and simply ignore the improvements of the competition or pretend they don't exist. It is troubling to see.

If you're still using MPC, that's fine...but don't justify it with bogus, trumped up claims that bear little in the way of reality.

no, but i don't complain/care.

And perhaps the mods can put a deadline for MPC subforum dissolution...say, at end of the year, December 2006, they'll move it to the general audio codecs forum unless by some miracle, some astonishingly great developments in MPC land come to fruition (which will, of course, require defining). Just another suggestion for compromise on this hot, touchy topic.

I don't see the need for any contrived "deadline".

About the seperate sections for some lossless formats, i will look into it, however, it's going to be a mess to sort the existing topics into those. Maybe if i'm bored someday soon.

Thank you for defending me, but...
I also share this idea. Let me explain.
Instead of debating about what death for a format is, we should start to define what a "living format is". There are different criterions.

Is development a condition? I would definitely say "no". If LAME project would stop, who could seriously pretend that MP3 is dead? With more than 100 millions MP3 players sold in one year, such claim would appear as completely insane.

So popularity is indeed the first condition for a format to live. With a user basis of millions persons, I think that we could seriously considering a format as still living. With 10000 persons worldwide, it's a bit more problematic. With 100 users, yes, the format should be considered as "dead". Yes, but MP3 had no more than 100 users at the very begining and there are now millions. So what matters is not only the number but also the trend. A format with a small but growing community is maybe stronger than a format with a deflating basis.

So let recap my position. To live or to be considered as alive, a format must have an huge amount of users or at least a growing community. Development and hardware support are not a direct condition; but with a halt-development we can expect to see the user basis quickly decreasing; and with no hardware support, it's hard to imagine the community becoming a big one. Other arguments like: open-source, marketing campaign, etc... have a direct influence on both essential criterions but are not directly a part of "life". It would be hard to call VQF a living format even if Yamaha would decide to make new advertisings for it.




Now let examine Musepack position:
- user basis: impossible to evaluate but probably very small. MPC is known to be a niche.
- user trend: impossible too, but we have some interesting elements with HA's polls. MPC was on top with 30% of voting people in 2001 source. It constantly decreased with subsequent polls and finally reach 11% on the last one. It's a huge fall! Other element of answer: the lack of activity in various MPC forums (the subject of this thread) here and on the official MPC board. There were much more litterature about musepack four years ago. So obviously the user basis of MPC isn't growing (and if it grows we should conclude that new MPC users don't like forums and polls at all).

So in my opinion MPC is dead. It not only has few users but the amount of people using it is decreasing. There are probably small MPC community spreaded over the net but the existence of a small community sharing 1000 or even 10.000 GB of MPC material (legal or not) can't be considered as a sign of life. The corpse is only moving by the energy of small worms but that's all. It's dead, unless new elements will encourage new people to use it and revive MPC. These elements may be: active development, clear superiority, strong efficiency (efficient encoders are always most popular than high-bitrate only ones), etc...





That's the most efficient concise argument in this topic. Congrats !

foobar2000 plays and converts to and from .mpc very elegantly, and should continue to do so for the forseeable future. Although my iPod doesn't support .mpc, I can't tell the difference when I transcode to .mp4, and I could use Rockbox if I didn't want to transcode.

My MPCs will never die. They will be a reminder of times before lossless, before foobar2000, and of friends and good times. They'll still be as transparent as the day I (or other people ) ripped them. I say let the forums stick around as a reminder, as a history. It was quite the ride, if nothing else.

The original point was about the fact that nobody seems to use these forums anymore and that MPC isn't really an attractive format. So it was suggested to remove them (and it was also suggested to restructate different elements in the same row).
Do you know any reason to keep a forum if you and all other persons are not really contributing to stay active? Personnaly, I don't.

There's indeed no reason to remove parts that are not used anymore but there's a need to create new ones (like dedicated lossless forums) and another one to not overburden the board with useless forums. That's why closing the MPC one looks as a relevant suggestion.


The quotes, yes. The all mythologic or doubtful statement about quality, etc... are still posted here from time to time.



Because these statistic are teaching us that MPC original vigour is apparently lost. No messages anymore and less users on polls compared to the early time: it has a signification. For a lot of people there's no need to defend the idea of MPC's collapse because it's obvious. For some others self-centered persons, defending the idea that MPC is still a living format just because they have two hard disks filled with MPC files, it's another story. Hence the need of collecting some evidence about MPC's collapse.


Stating the obvious about MPC from time to time isn't really a rape I'd say. But what about using MPC: isn't it gerontophilia?

It's open-source, or "Code it and add it yourself if you're unhappy". For some people, wide decoding support is important. It certainly was for me. Libmpcdec works on almost every known platform. Mplayer and VLC added support for it. I know I will not depend anymore on some winamp plugins to listen to mpc files on linux.

About attacks on the musepack.net site
Initial goals were :
- to set up a unique place where all mpc related cod and binaries could be downloaded. (ok)
- to set up a sample database with problematic samples (dead)
- update xmms/gtk code. (ok)
And a few other things I forgot. It's quite similar to some todo Frank Klemm posted about musepack a long time ago on those forums (Donation thread).

While I don't necessarily agree with how the site is currently handled, I also find the current 'anti-mpc' crusade on HA pointless. The codec, if dead, will fade away naturally without all the fuss and drama around. Deleting the forums can't be backed up by any valid argument.


Thanks

The point of the debate isn't to see if adding support for Solaris or even Linux important is, but if such development could be used as argument to say if the format is dead or not. If someone would hack a vqf decoder and then code tons of plug-ins for a myriad of players working on all existing OS, would someone say: "hey, look, vqf is living again?" I doubt so. Therefore, coding new support for rare platforms doesn't really count as argument prooving that a format is alive rather than dead.

Anyway, most people are using Windows. Moreover, people using high-quality encoders are usually looking for additional improvements rather than support for FreeBSD. People are happy when a new release of LAME, Nero Digital or aoTuV is done - not when the source code is successfully compiled on an esoteric OS. This is what a majority of person are expecting. Do you imagine the success of the PC Donation campaign if it was done on the theme of "library maintenance"? Frank Klemm would earn a new mouse, at best...



Another crusade? Wow!
You know, several formats disappeared from the scene without any noise: vqf, mp3pro, realaudio, atrac... Why is there problem with MPC in your opinion? Isn't it linked to the fact that some person very fond of this format are still posting unverified, outdated or simply wrong claims about different kind of self-proclaimed superior points over other formats?


Again, why burden the board with deserted forums? WMA, VQF, MP3Pro, ATRAC didn't own their own couple of forums on HA.org foundation;if only active or popular ones got their dedicated boards it was for a reason: clarity and usefulness. Now MPC isn't active nor attractive, even on the specialized board which was the birthplace of MPC community. So it would be logical to put MPC where it now belongs: in the potpourri forum called 'other lossy formats' among atrac, vqf and wma. And to give instead a dedicated place for the new popular formats like flac or wavpack.


You're welcome

As a knowledge repository. I don't see the advantage of taking it out. By the way, never used, probably never will use MPC.

What kind of knowledge should members expect from messages posted in 2002 about outdated versions of an unsignificant format? Information about --xlevel? Features of the upcoming SV8? A debate about Buschman/Klemm encoders? Old topics are only confusing for new members. "Hey, I read somewhere that --nmt 16 --tmn 32 is near lossless. So why isn't --quality 10 recommanded instead"? Answer: --quality 10 was coded one year later...
Most answers to most questions are also outdated. Who would still suggest mpxchange or old mpc->mp3 app? What about all dead links?

Anyway, there's no need to delete the archive. MPC messages could easily be moved into the 'other formats' compost. Such massive transfer from one forum to another wont hurt the current aspect of the new forum, because most MPC threads will immediately sink into the depths of this section. Ratworms interested by old MPC debates would easily found them whatever the section they are stored.

You never know. Moving it to the "other formats" would be worst. Cause it would be merged with formats that one day can be mainstrean. I think is better to add a sticky/notice at the top, explaining the current situation.