Recent inquiries about audio player options available to Musepackers have prompted this news item. Reminder: our Program Overview page, which lists several types of applications available on various operating systems and devices may prove useful.
The recently refreshed list includes players for Android such as Poweramp, Neutron Music Player, DeaDBeeF Player, Rocket Player and jetAudio, and players for iOS: Pure Player, Media Player PRO and BUZZ Player.
As always, Musepack support continues to grow and we can all enjoy the benefits. Happy Musepacking in 2013!
The software front is calm, so have fun in the meantime:
People worldwide deserve free access to proper performances of music by some of the greatest, most influential composers who ever lived. Kickstarting this notable cause, a fine recorded performance of one of Johann Sebastian Bach's most important works, by pianist Kimiko Ishizaka, has recently been made available online, free of copyright.
Readers of the Musepack website can now enjoy a select remastered version of the Open Goldberg Variations (141MB zip file, 32 mpc files).
Developers: source code revision 475 contains important fixes and some additions since r435 (see log)
A late happy new year to all Musepackers! 2011 is the beginning of many advancements in open software standards and operating system interoperability. A couple of companies are main driving forces behind these developments, but you, the users of open tools, are the real decision makers. Make your voice heard if you want to standardize the audio format that gave you extremely high fidelity, compression and processing efficiency, Replay Gain support, APEv2 tags and more without shoving a single ad or fee at you in a dozen years.
If you are another user unsatisfied by Google's "medium priority" of adding Musepack support to Android, you can add your vote on this thread. You know that Musepack should be included in HTML5, so tell the W3C about it. Even if you want Microsoft's next operating system to support it, tell Microsoft about it, even if it seems unlikely, to say the least, that they will stop ignoring nonproprietary formats. Things are changing and sooner or later, even companies that are a part of major multimedia format monopolies will cave in and support nonproprietary open formats.
As for some news, VLC media player 1.1.6 adds support for Musepack SV8 as well as SV7.
The Rockbox firmware has been updated to support Musepack SV8.
Updates in Windows package: mpcgain.exe was fixed to prevent corruption which could be caused in certain cases and to allow wildcards. mpccut.exe is now more resilient to errors and can cut broken files.
Stream Version 8 of the Musepack format has been finalized and is officially released. See this text for details.
If you've been intending to get a sleek new pocket-sized multimedia player with integrated WLAN for the holidays, you might like to know that Cowon Q5W comes with Musepack support.
Cowon Systems has launched A3 (view specs), the successor to the A2. The new portable multimedia player features further improved high quality display and sound effects and supports Musepack.
Cowon has confirmed that support for the new Musepack SV8 beta will be applied and for the final version once it's out, and that Musepack SV8 audio in Matroska video and audio containers will be supported when the specification is made.
Again, Cowon sets an example for all others by supporting free formats without discrimination as well as providing exceptional quality in its products.
COWON's upcoming premium PMP series player, 'COWON Q5' will support Musepack audio. This news comes several months after COWON added Musepack support to the 'COWON A2' player via an official firmware update.
The development of the latest stream version of the Musepack format is in its final stages. SV8 brings many new features and improvements to the Musepack format. A public beta will hopefully be released within the next 1 to 2 weeks. Its purpose will be to catch any possible issues that have gone unnoticed and to finalize specifications. Stay tuned.
libmpcdec 1.2.6 is a bugfix release fixing an infinite loop regression from 1.2.3 and possible noise when decoding beginning of files.
COWON has released a new firmware version (1.89F) for its mobile multimedia player PMP A2 which adds Musepack support. We commend the first company to officially support Musepack in a hardware product.
libmpcdec 1.2.5 fixes a versioning issue with 1.2.3 and 1.2.4 which prevented binary incompatibility from being reported. Linux users with version 1.2.2 installed can safely update. If you have 1.2.3 or 1.2.4 installed, you'll have to reinstall libmpcdec. We're sorry about the inconvenience. For advice and posting possible issues, see this thread.
The FFmpeg multimedia framework used by many projects now supports Musepack decoding natively. (log entry)
libmpcdec 1.2.4 fixes stream initialization on non-mpc files.
Musepack encoder version 1.16 and libmpcdec 1.2.3 are released. The updated decoder library enables fast seeking and uses less memory. The updated encoder features an updated bitstream (7.2) which is fully compatible with SV7.1/7.0 decoders, modified help text, unicode support for tags on unix and more.
Full details, changelogs and some news here.
All applications using libmpcdec can take advantage of the newly introduced fast seeking. On Unix/Linux/BSD, users can update to the latest libmpcdec and get instant seeking with players that use it. On Windows, foobar2000 users can try the newly-released v0.9.4.2 beta version.
On the portable front, Rockbox, which supports Musepack playback on iRiver, iPod and iAudio players, has been taking advantage of the fast seeking for a while and as reported by the developers, Musepack decoding speed is at the top on par with FLAC and MP3 decoding. High ratio of quality per storage space and battery time for you.
Software developers are encouraged to make use of the new decoder library which is now properly suited for more purposes.
As always, ongoing developments are discussed on our forums.
Rockbox daily builds support Musepack playback. Owners of iRiver H100 series portable players can now enjoy high quality Musepack audio on the move.
libmpcdec has been updated to version 1.2.1 which contains code cleanups and an Mplayer interface. The XMMS and BMP plugins have also been updated to version 1.2 which includes various bug fixes and better Unicode handling. It requires the latest TagLib.
Full details here.
The 1.15v Musepack encoder for Windows has been updated to a faster build that provides a speed improvement of 5% to 14%. Details here.
Update #2 (9:10 PM GMT): As previously announced, the DNS move has been delayed. It's now commenced and things should be back to normal in a few hours. Details about the move here.
Musepack.net's DNS will change at around 1:30 AM GMT, June 4. Due to this, the domain may not be accessible to you for a while. The forum will be closed for a while as well to avoid possible problems due to a server change. We've set up a temporary address at (address removed) for you to use to access the site during this time, if it occurs. Don't bookmark this address, as it will only be active temporarily.
libmusepack is renamed to libmpcdec, to make room for the future libmpcenc. Version 1.2 fixes relative/absolute includes, changes mpc_reader_t's structure and adds MSVC project files. The API was broken in version 1.1.1, please use the new 1.2, or 1.1 if you must.
New version 1.2 RC1 of the XMMS-Musepack and BMP-Musepack plugins fixes memory leaks and various bugs, has better unicode handling (in XMMS) and more.
Full info and discussion here.
libmusepack 1.1.1 contains a fixed-point mode bug fix. Unless you need to use fixed-point, you can keep using 1.1.
The latest Musepack encoder, 1.15v, includes a fix for denormal number issues. The source code can now be compiled easily for AMD64. All German comments in the source code have been translated to English. Discussion here.
Musepack encoder version 1.15u is now released. It is a major release which fixes several problem cases. Full details here.
Musepack encoder version 1.15t is a maintenance release which fixes bugs with previous versions 1.14 and 1.15s.
Update: The updated LAMIP plugin (20050123) now uses libmusepack 1.1. It's now maintained by LAMIP and can be downloaded from their site.
libmusepack 1.1 is now released, and contains several major changes. It's now under a BSD license, which enables Musepack to be supported under a wider range of applications such as hardware players and closed software, due to its unrestrictive nature. The library now uses pure C code, which also enables support in more applications. The API has been revised and detailed documentation is added.
Version 1.1.2 of the XMMS and BMP plugins is also released. Due to the comprehensive changes, previous versions of the plugins won't work with the new lib.
Discussion here
GStreamer Plugins 0.8.7 supports Musepack and has basic APEv2 tags support.
The XMMS plugin is updated to version 1.1.1. It eliminates a possible segfault with recent glib versions by removing glib-2.0 dependency.
The XMMS and BMP plugins were updated to version 1.1 and are now considered stable. Both use autotools for easy installation and require the new libmusepack 1.0.3 which also uses autotools and is faster as it uses floating point mode by default.
Musepack encoder version 1.15s is out. It's a maintenance release which fixes all known issues and introduces a few changes. View this post for full details.
The XMMS and BMP plugins were updated to version 1.1 alpha 10 which enables the equalizer and fixes a bug with skipping broken tracks.
The XMMS and BMP plugins were updated to version 1.1 alpha 9 which adds variable bitrate display and fixes bugs. Both require the new libmusepack 1.0.2 which contains bug fixes and optimizations.
RadLight MPC DirectShow filter was added to the Windows section. It allows MPC files to be played back by any program that uses DirectShow, such as Windows Media Player.
The XMMS and BMP plugins had been updated to version 1.1 alpha 7, which adds tag writing and fixes a problem with special characters in BMP. The Winamp plugin had been updated to version 0.99f to allow skipping non-existent entries in the playlist.
VSO Software, the makers of CopyToDVD and BlindWrite, support Musepack in their products.
3 Linux updates: libmusepack has been updated to version 1.0.1. It's now more portable, all int types have been changed. The XMMS and Beep Media Player plugins have been updated to version 1.1 alpha 6.
XMMS plug-in v1.1 alpha 3 is now available in the Linux section. It is written from scratch and uses the new Musepack decoding library, and supports tag reading, ReplayGain, gapless playback (with crossfade properly configured) and unicode.
The full source code of version 1.15r as well as portability optimized integer/floating-point decoder source code are available down the page.
The main page is updated with a link to SpecFOO2003.