From: Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> To: lwn@lwn.net, editors@newsforge.com, editors@linuxtoday.com Subject: mpg321 0.2.0 released Date: 23 Sep 2001 14:47:04 -0400 Version 0.2.0 of the Free drop-in replacement for mpg123, mpg321, has been released. Highlights of this release include: * A much better algorithm for detecting the length and number of frames in a given mp3 file. This should increase startup time for people using the verbose (-v) mode. * An implementation of the 'remote control' (-R) functionality of mpg123. This gives frontends a known, reliable interface to use when using mpg321 or mpg123 as a backend for playing MP3 files. It also allows seeking within and pausing of files. * A new compile-time configure flag for setting the default output device (--with-default-audio=). This allows people who want to use esd or alsa, for example, to do so without using the -o flag. * Porting to the new libao 0.8.0 interface, which allows aRts output as well. * Other bug-fixes and enhancements. This and previous versions of mpg321 can be downloaded from http://people.debian.org/~drew/ (A Sourceforge project is in the works.) This release marks one of the final requirements for frontend use; that is, the "Remote Control" feature. However, there are a few minor bugs that have already been identified and fixed, and there will certainly be more latent. Please use this version of mpg321 just as you would mpg123, so that any new bugs introduced in this version can be shaken out. Debian packages of version 0.2.0 have already been uploaded, and will be included in the debian unstable ("sid") archive shortly. Red Hat users are encouraged to contribute spec files and RPMs of mpg321. Please note that version 0.1.5 of mpg321 is already included in the Red Hat 7.2 beta ("Roswell"). mpg321 still lacks a few features that mpg123 has; namely * ID3 tag support * Extremely robust and well-tested networking support * Very low resource usage/high-speed decoding and downsampling The first two items are being targetted for version 0.3.0. The last can be helped by further optimizing MAD, in particular. Any and all contributions are welcome. About mpg321: mpg321 was created to alleviate the dependency many people had on the non-free command-line mp3 player mpg123. It allowed many front-ends to mpg123 to move to the official Debian archive, rather than being relegated to the 'contrib' section. mpg321 is based on the MAD MPEG decoder library by Rob Leslie <rob@mars.org>. In particular, this means that mpg321 uses only integer instructions to decode mp3 files, which is a huge win on any processor which lacks a floating point unit (FPU) like the ARM. It also means that mpg321 has very high output quality, since MAD is a Full Layer III ISO/IEC 11172-3 audio decoder, as defined by the standard. See http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/ for more information. mpg321 uses the libao audio library, developed mainly for the Ogg Vorbis project, for output, which allows it (unlike mpg123) to switch output at runtime. libao natively supports ESD, ALSA, aRts, and OSS output, among others. See the mpg321 manual page for more details. -- Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> <drew@debian.org> Please encrypt email sent to me.