MozartEB sound pak Version 1.01

[MikeHart]

Hi folks,

here is the Mozart Sound Pak for Emergence Basic.

MozartEB support a lot of audio formats and ways to playback your audio creations. Here is a short list of features:

- Supports Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, uncompressed WAV, AIFF, MOD, S3M, XM, and IT files.
- Use of DirectSound or WinMM
- Streaming and buffered audio
- Volume, pan and pitch shift modification
- Runtime enumeration of audio devices and file formats
- CD-Playback

Cheers
Michael

Edit: Download temporary removed due to a bug in it. Will post a new version on my site.

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

Nice work Michael.

[Steven Picard]

I tried it out real quick.  Nice work!!

[MikeHart]

Thanks guys,

as EB is IBP compatible it was very easy. Let me know if something is not working.

Michael

[Barney]

That was quick! Let's make some music then... 

Barney

[Andrew]

That's great Mike. Thanks.

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

I didn't find any bugs in it.  So here it is again, ready to download

[MikeHart]

  Thank you so much Paul for checking it. Maybe it is just my machine. 

[barry]

I just tried this with the playogg sample program.  Works fine with the sample file and with a small enough MP3 file but when the file gets a little larger it doesn't play.

It worked with a 1.71 meg file but not with a file about twice that size.  I didn't check inbetween sizes.

I'm interested in making a very simple player for long files, up to about 300 meg.  These are audiobooks and I recently got a remote control for my PC but none of the MP3 players I have that it works well with will remember their place in the book and it's hard to find it.  So I thought I'd make a simple player with large buttons that would remember it's place and try that.

Is there a way to make this work with larger files?  Or does anyone have any idea of another simple way to do this?  Simple is important here.

Barry

[barry]

Seems I was mistaken.  It still won't work with a 300 meg file but I got it to work fine with files over about 20 meg.  I'm not sure what was wrong the first time.  I did reboot in between so maybe that was it.

When I try with a 300 meg file it crashes.  I tried setting the buffer size to up to 400 meg and I tried not setting a buffer size and letting it default and I tried smaller sizes but it crashes.  I have a 512 meg system with integrated graphics so probably less than half of that is available at any given time and I won't be surprised if that's the problem.

I tried with a 100 meg file and nothing happened.  I had to terminate the program.  It got slower as the files got larger so maybe it was going to work.  I waited a lot longer than it took to crash with the 300 meg file.

I can probably make do with 20 meg files or thereabouts by breaking the book up into smaller parts and letting the program logic handle that.  I want to see it as a long file that matches the time on my portable player so when I have to leave I can make them match.  I can make that work with what it's doing now.

However it would be nice not to have to break up the book to listen to it.  That's less important but it would be nice if there's a way to load the entire file.  Any ideas?

By the way, this is a very nice little package.  It sure is easy to use.

Barry

[MikeHart]

Hi Barry,

can you post a little source code that can reproduce the problem?

Michael

[barry]

Hi Barry,

can you post a little source code that can reproduce the problem?

Michael

I used the sample program PlayOGG, unchanged except for the file name.

Barry

[MikeHart]

I will try to look into this. Not sure if I can get a file, big like 300mb.

[sapero]

Servus Mike, use any mp3 file - read it to memory, then write multiple times into one (new) file. It will play. Mp3 file format has streaming features, the file contains an array of 20ms (or so) music chunks.

[barry]

Don't spend a lot of time on this for my sake at this point.  I can make do with it as it is.  Being able to use the really large files will make life a bit easier for me but I can break up the files pretty easily to listen if I have to.

By the way can you tell me what the units are for the mzGetLength, mzGetPosition and mzSetPosition functions?

Barry

[Brice Manuel]

Mike:  If it helps, I can replicate the problem.  It works fine on all of my systems that have real sound cards, even old ones.  However, the one test system that just uses a mobo chip for the sound has the same issue as Barry describes.  Mobo sound chips are just as worthless as mobo video chips.  I am guessing the problem in my case is due to hardware limitation or shoddy drivers?

[MikeHart]

Mmmh, not sure. My notebook uses one of these mobo chips too but I had only a 60mb WAV file to experiment. Not sure if it is that format, but this file is allways loaded completely (task manager info) before it starts playing. Right now I'm in the dark. I will look further.

[barry]

For what it's worth I'm using a laptop that has the sound chip on the motherboard.

Barry

[MikeHart]

I'm afraid that it is the machine you are using. I tested it today with an bigger MP3 file. It seems that it is streaming fine, means it didn't load the whole file (judging by the memory info task of my taskmanager) so depeding on the file it does streaming fine.

[barry]

I also have 2 desktops and the problem exists on them as well, although I don't use them much for this.  All three have sound chips on the motherboard.  The laptop is a Thinkpad R40 and the desktops are a Comaq and an Acer so they have very little in common other than that they're all the same general class of computer.

Barry

[MikeHart]

Are there free audiobooks that someone (or me)  can download and replicate the problem?

[Brice Manuel]

On my one system that had the issue, I was digging under the bed this weekend and found a really old sound blaster card.  Not sure of the exact make, but it was in a low-end system bought once 98 SE was out.  I disabled the MOBO chip, installed the sound card, and Mozart works without issues on a 650MB file.

I use the MP3 format a lot, Audio Books, Sermons, and Old-Time Radio Shows, but generally the MP3 files are in more managable sizes since not all MP3 players support automatically resuming where you left off (easier to fast forward through a smaller file) and MP3 players have limited space.

[barry]

not all MP3 players support automatically resuming where you left off

That's true and it's a major problem since there's usually no way to find out if they resume till you try it.  If it's okay to go off-topic here, most players made by Creative Labs, Mobiblu, Cowon, Rio and Iriver will resume.  Newer Ipods will resume.  A few Sandisk players will resume but most won't.  RCA players sometimes say they resume but they don't.  Other companies vary by player.  A few Sonys will resume.  Most won't.  Most but not all Samsung players will resume.

Even the companies whose players usually do resume sometimes come out with a model that doesn't.

Another feature that I like even more than resume is a bookmark feature that lets you mark a few places to come back to.  This can be used as a sort of manual resume, too.  My preference is to have both bookmarks and resume, though.  Some of the more advanced Creative players and a lot of Rio players will do both.

Barry

[Brice Manuel]

We mainly use CD MP3 players for listening to old time radio, audio books or sermons.  Much easier to organize your collection, and much easier to swap a CD than to fire up a computer and transfer stuff to a player.  None of these CD players I have support autoresume, although I am also limited by brands as I need to support some of the lower quality bitrates.

I do have a four flash based devices, two of which are Creative.  One supports resuming, one is older and doesn't.  The older 128MB Creative still chugs along and I use it daily even though its memory is partially fried and I can only use about 40MB. 

I would never buy a hard-drive based device.

[barry]

We mainly use CD MP3 players for listening to old time radio, audio books or sermons.  Much easier to organize your collection, and much easier to swap a CD than to fire up a computer and transfer stuff to a player.  None of these CD players I have support autoresume, although I am also limited by brands as I need to support some of the lower quality bitrates.

You can still find Rio Volts and Iriver CD MP3 players on Ebay, usually for under $25.  Often for $10 or $15.  Except for the Rio Volt SP-150 they'll all resume. All of them will play any bitrate or sample rate you give them.  I also listen to OTR that I download and I use mine for that all the time.  They're great!

By the way, Iriver makes all of them but they made the Volt to Rio's specs which were lower than their own so generally the Iriver players have more features and produce louder output.  But both are great MP3 CD players.  Just avoid the SP-150.

I do have a four flash based devices, two of which are Creative.  One supports resuming, one is older and doesn't.  The older 128MB Creative still chugs along and I use it daily even though its memory is partially fried and I can only use about 40MB. 

You can get the flash based Creative Zen Nano Plus 1 gig on Creative's Ebay store right now for $25.  These resume and play anything.  They also are tiny and get great battery life.  About 18 hours on a single AAA battery.

I would never buy a hard-drive based device.

I have a few and have had no problems with them.  I even have an Archos 504 80 gig player that I really love but it's more for videos than for MP3.  However it does both nicely.

Barry