Musepack SV8 beta is out

[Seed]

The Musepack SV8 beta is out. The new stream version solves all of the format's issues and opens a vast range of possibilties. We have set a goal to make Musepack an optimal choice for any kind of application which demands high quality audio. SV8 offers many improvements and benefits to anyone from users to content providers to application developers.

Musepack audio can now be used in video, online radio, voice communications and more. It's optimal for projects which demand high quality, fast-decoded, truly gapless audio streams and instant, sample-accurate seeking such as video games, interactive or static demonstrations and various specialized applications.


This is a beta of the format's stream version itself and not just the codec's accompanying applications. SV8 is complete, but it needs to be finalized. There is a chance that some bugs have gone unnoticed. The purpose of this beta release is to allow wide-scale testing before the new stream version is finalized. Your participation is essential.

We don't recommend that you start mass-encoding or converting SV7 files to SV8 just yet. If changes to the bitstream will have to be made, they may break compatibility with files created by the beta version. After the public beta testing period is finished (the period of time depends on the findings) and the final version is released, you could safely encode and convert.


Users: if you encounter any trouble with either mpcenc, mpcdec, mpcgain, mpccut, or mpc2sv8, feel free to report it.
Developers: if you have any question to ask, problem to report or patch to submit, feel free to do so.


Package contents:

mpcenc - Musepack SV8 encoder
mpcdec - Musepack SV8 decoder sample application based on the latest decoder library
mpcgain - Musepack SV8 ReplayGain utility based on our new ReplayGain library
mpccut - Musepack SV8 stream cutter
mpc2sv8 - Musepack SV7 to SV8 lossless converter


Changes:

- Packetized stream allowing muxing into audio and video containers (e.g. MKA, MKV, NUT)
- Streamable
- Sample-accurate, fast seeking independent of file length
- Sample-accurate cutting
- No internal clipping. --noxlevel flag removed, not needed anymore
- Bitstream compressed by highly optimized canonical huffman tables - 2% smaller files and faster decoding
- Cleaned up and rearranged code - libmpcdec, libmpcenc, libmpcpsy
- Removed input from audio card (OSS)

SV8 stream options:

--no_ei - do not write encoder information packet (default: off)
--no_st - do not write the seek table (default: off)
--num_frames x x = 0..7 - number of frames in packet = 4^x (default: 3)
--seek_distance x x = 0..15 - keep a seek table entry every 2^x audio packet (default: 1)

SV8 specification


Download:

Windows package
Source code


To test SV8 files, you can use the newly released foobar2000 beta.

Naturally, while SV8 is capable of being used in a new range of applications, support for it has to be implemented in them first. Applications which already support SV7 will have to be updated to allow use of SV8 files.

[Antonski]

Thank you!!!
I'm going to start testing tonight

\m/

[blaggo]

I've always liked the format since several years ago, but I never 'adopted it' - this may change in the very near future.... because of the development which seems to have been taken up again.

I see Musepack now, and since maybe the last 7 years(?) as in a similar position to OGG Vorbis, but OGG Vorbis kind of fizzled out - not ruling out a resurgence there too of course. But anyway, I'm just pleased and grateful to see this kind of development - thanks very very much to all involved.

[Muse]

I have always been loyal to musepack and I'm very happy about this news.

Congratulations and chapeau for the developers!!!


Muse

[Rabbit]

Thanks.

I'm expecting the final version (or, at least, the final stream version).

[galova]

great news!

[burning shadow]

This is FANTASTIC! You guys are wonderful! Thank you very much! I'll start testing soon too.

[Dhry]

Congrats on the new SV8! ETA for a WinAMP plugin?

[mll]

About wider adoption by the industry (videogames etc.): they are scared about the legal (non-)status of Musepack. Is it truly, 100% free (as in speech) ? If so, sketch up a page that clearly answers all the lingerings arguments about this, one by one.

[Shy]

I don't know of anyone being "scared" in the industry. There is no argument which shows that what we've already clearly stated is false. We've learned from the Vorbis legality debate fiasco in the past to avoid referring to baseless FUD. It's up to companies to conduct their own research if they're concerned.
The decoder is under a BSD-like license, the encoder is under an LGPL license, and the format is patent-free.

[Lost Angel]

take it easy, guys, I told you, I've not compared, just had that subjective impression

[xmixahlx]

i'm breaking out the cuetools lib from upstream, so look for a tarball in a bit, r2d.

[xmixahlx]

from cuetools in svn...

patches for mpcchap:
http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/dev/cueto...xmixahlx.patch
http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/dev/cueto...xmixahlx.patch

patch for cuetools:
http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/dev/cueto...xmixahlx.patch

tarball for cuetools:
http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/dev/cueto...00.orig.tar.gz

patch for debian:
http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/dev/cueto...wares1.diff.gz


new debian packages for replaygain, cuetools and musepack are upped to rarewares/debian

r2d, perhaps we should host the cuetools source like replaygain...

also, cuetools from svn includes some important updates from the debian maintainer, so anyone NOT on debian should grab from svn anyways.

slomo, are you the official debian maintainer for sv8 packages?


later

[slomo]

Originally Posted by xmixahlx

slomo, are you the official debian maintainer for sv8 packages?

Yes... so in cuetools SVN a shared library is built? That's good, I've disabled mpcchap in the packages for now and will enable them again once the cuetools Debian package provides the library

[xmixahlx]

well... i grabbed cuetools from svn, patched, and made my own packages (shared lib + dev)

...and after patching SV8 from svn it builds & works fine.

just grab my patches, etc. from the previous post and it will all make sense.


later

[Antonski]

Would somebody compile the binaries from the latest code?
Once I've tried, but my files were significant bigger and slower.
I would like to play a bit with chapter utility, just curious.