K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codecs are required to encode and/or decode (play) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play 99% of all the movies that you download from the internet.

The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:
- It it always up-to-date with the latest versions of the codecs.
- It is very user-friendly and the installation is fully customizable, meaning that you can install only those components that you really want.
- It has been very well tested, so that the package doesn’t contain any conflicting codecs.
- It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5 comes with:
• Player:
- Media Player Classic Home Cinema [version 1.2.1008.0]
- Media Player Classic [version 6.4.9.1 rev. 99]
• ffdshow:
- ffdshow [revision 2925]
- ffdshow VFW interface
- extra plugins
• DirectShow video decoding filters:
- XviD [version 1.2.1]
- DivX [version 6.8.5]
- On2 VP6 [version 6.4.2.0]
- On2 VP7 [version 7.0.10.0]
- MPEG-2 (Cyberlink) [version 8.4.0.205]
- MPEG-2 (Gabest) [version 1.2.1020.0]
• DirectShow audio decoding filters:
- AC3/DTS/LPCM (AC3Filter) [version 1.51a]
- Vorbis (CoreVorbis) [version 1.1.0.79]
- AAC (MONOGRAM) [version 0.9.6.0]
• DirectShow audio parsers:
- FLAC (madFLAC) [version 1.8]
- WavPack (CoreWavPack) [version 1.1.1]
- MusePack (MONOGRAM) [version 0.9.2.0 | 0.4.0.0]
- Monkey’s Audio [version 1.0.0.0]
- OptimFROG (RadLight) [version 1.0.0.1]
- AMR (MONOGRAM) [version 1.0.1.0]
- DC-Bass Source [version 1.2.0]
- AC3/DTS Source (AC3File) [version 0.5b]
• DirectShow source filters:
- AVI splitter (Gabest) [version 1.0.0.9]
- AVI splitter (Haali Media Splitter) [version 1.9.42.1]
- MP4 splitter (Haali Media Splitter) [version 1.9.42.1]
- MP4 splitter (Gabest) [version 1.0.0.5]
- Matroska splitter (Haali Media Splitter) [version 1.9.42.1]
- Matroska splitter (Gabest) [version 1.0.3.1]
- Ogg splitter (Haali Media Splitter) [version 1.9.42.1]
- Ogg splitter (Gabest) [version 1.2.997.0]
- MPEG PS/TS splitter (Gabest) [version 1.2.1020.0]
- MPEG PS/TS splitter (Haali Media Splitter) [version 1.9.42.1]
- FLV splitter (Gabest) [version 1.0.0.5]
- CDXA Reader (Gabest) [version 1.0.0.2]
• DirectShow subtitle filter:
- DirectVobSub (a.k.a. VSFilter) [version 2.39.5.1]
- DirectVobSub (a.k.a. VSFilter) [version 2.33]
• Other filters:
- Haali Video Renderer [version 1.9.42.1]
• VFW video codecs:
- XviD [version 1.2.1]
- DivX [version 6.8.5]
- x264 [revision 1115]
- On2 VP6 [version 6.4.2.0]
- On2 VP7 [version 7.0.10.0]
- Intel Indeo 4 [version 4.51.16.2]
- Intel Indeo 5 [version 5.2562.15.54]
- Intel I.263 [version 2.55.1.16]
- huffyuv [version 2.1.1 CCE Patch 0.2.5]
- YV12 (Helix) [version 1.2]
• ACM audio codecs:
- MP3 (Fraunhofer) [version 3.4.0.0]
- MP3 (LAME) [version 3.98.2]
- AC3ACM [version 1.4]
- Vorbis [version 0.0.3.6]
- DivX Audio [version 4.2.0.0]
• Real Alternative:
- RealMedia codecs [version 6.0.14.895]
- RealMedia plugin for Internet Explorer
- RealMedia plugin for Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape/Opera/Chrome
- RealMedia DirectShow splitter [version 1.0.1.2]
• Tools:
- Codec Tweak Tool [version 2.5.1]
- GSpot Codec Information Appliance [version 2.70a]
- MediaInfo Lite [version 0.7.14]
- VobSubStrip [version 0.11]
- GraphStudio [version 0.3.1.0]
- Haali Muxer
- FourCC Changer
- Bitrate Calculator

- Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5
- Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5 (mirror 1)
- Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5 (mirror 2)
- Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5 (mirror 3)
- Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.8.5 (mirror 4)

Foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats. The foobar2000 player supports the following audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND and even more with the help of additional components. One of the biggest advantages of the player is the open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player. With foobar2000 you also get support for gapless playback, easily customizable user interface layout, advanced tagging capabilities, support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component and even more…

- Download Foobar2000 9.6.8 Music Player
- Download Foobar2000 9.6.8 Music Player (mirror 1)
- Download Foobar2000 9.6.8 Music Player (mirror 2)
- Download Foobar2000 9.6.8 Music Player (mirror 3)

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats. The foobar2000 player supports the following audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND and even more with the help of additional components. One of the biggest advantages of the player is the open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player. With foobaer2000 you also get support for gapless playback, easily customizable user interface layout, advanced tagging capabilities, support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component and even more…

- Download Foobar2000 9.6.5 Music Player

Tento článok sa snaží objasniť princípy kódovania audia a videa, prináša pohľad na ich najrozšírenejšie formáty a v neposlednom rade slúži ako základná pomôcka pri výbere toho správneho formátu pre vaše potreby.

V poslednom období sa často hovorí o rôznych typoch súborov a formátoch zvuku či videa. Zo svojich prenosných prehrávačoch si púšťame obľúbené skladby vo formátoch MP3, FLAC, či Vorbis bez toho, aby sme vôbec tušili čo tieto skratky znamenajú. U videa je situácia podobná, nakoľko aj tu existuje veľké množstvo formátov a z toho vyplývajúcich skratiek ako napríklad MPEG, H.264, HuffYUV, WMV a pod. Skúšali ste sa však zamyslieť nad tým, ako vôbec takýto digitálny obsah vzniká a čo mu predchádza?

Nenahraditeľný pomocníci

Formát súboru tak ako sa s ním stretávame dnes je konkrétny spôsob kódovania informácií za účelom ich uchovania v počítačovom súbore, alebo na nejakom inom médiu, napr. CD disku. Keďže pevný disk a v podstate akékoľvek pamäťové zariadenie, vie uchovávať iba bity, počítač musí poznať spôsob ako premieňať informácie na na nuly (0) a jednotky (1), a naopak. Tu nachádzajú svoje uplatnenie analógovo-číslicové (A/D) a číslicovo-analógové (D/A) prevodníky. D/A prevodníky sa dnes používajú všade tam kde je treba z digitálneho signálu vytvoriť signál analógový teda vo všetkých prehrávačoch (CD, MP3 prehrávače), zvukových kartách v počítačoch a pod. A/D prevodníky sa uplatňujú v nahrávacích štúdiách, v diktafónoch, či digitálnych telefónoch (GSM, UMTS). Najrozšírenejšou formou kódovania je pulzná kódová modulácia – PCM. Princíp PCM spočíva v pravidelnom odčítaní hodnoty signálu pomocou A/D prevodníka a jeho záznamu v binárnej podobe. Určujúcimi parametrami sú vzorkovacia frekvencia a jemnosť rozlíšenia jednotlivých hodnôt. Vzorkovacia frekvencia sa pohybuje od 44,1 kHz u zvukového CD po ešte vyššie hodnoty u profesionálnych záznamových zariadení a ovplyvňuje kvalitu reprodukovaného záznamu. U zvukového CD zaberie jedna minúta záznamu 44100 × 16 × 2 × 60 : 8 = 10 584 000 bajtov. Na osobným počítačoch sa preto na ukladanie zvukov používajú úspornejšie formáty MP3, FLAC a Vorbis, ktoré sú v porovnaní s PCM schopné dosiahnuť viac ako desaťnásobnej úspory miesta iba pri malom zhoršení subjektívnej kvality.

Dlhá cesta na CD – čko..

Než sa však z analógového signálu stane PCM zvuk, musí najprv prejsť vzorkovaním, kvantovaním a kódovaním. Vzorkovač zaznamenáva aktuálne hodnoty analógového signálu v pravidelných intervaloch s istou frekvenciou, kvantovaním sa namerané hodnoty “zaokrúhľujú” na najbližšiu úroveň amplitúdy každej vzorky. Pri kódovaní zvuku hudobného CD sa používa 16 bitové kódovanie – to znamená, že každá vzorka ja zakódovaná 16 – ticou jednotiek a núl – všetkých možných napäťových úrovní signálu. Čím je vyššia vzorkovacia frekvencia, tým kvalitnejší zvuk získame. Doteraz najkvalitnejší zvuk v CD kvalite so vzorkovacou frekvenciou 44,1kHz, 16bit stereo je prekonaný formátom DVD-Audio, kde vzorkovacia frekvencia je až 192kHz s 24 bitovým rozlíšením.

Moje meno je kodek

V súvislosti s formátmi zvuku sa často hovorí aj o kodekoch. Tie sa využívajú pre efektívnejšiu prácu s multimediálnymi súbormi a slúžia na zakódovanie a dekódovanie (na kompresiu a dekompresiu zvuku, alebo videa). Slovo kodek pochádza z angličtiny (codec) a je to skratka z dvoch slov COder a DECoder. Kodek. Je to ovládač, ktorý pridáva podporu pre nejaký konkrétny audio/video formát pre operačný systém. Vďaka kodeku operačný systém tento formát rozozná a dovolí ho prehrať (decode = dekóduje ho) alebo dovolí zmeniť ho na iný formát (encode = zakóduje). Kodek môže byť nejaký chip v prístroji, alebo softvérová knižnica v počítači, ktorá dokáže komprimovať aj dekomprimovať. Aby mohlo byť niečo nazvané kodekom musí spĺňať dve podmienky. Musí fungovať obidvoma smermi – kompresia aj dekompresia a musí sa jednať o konkrétnu implementáciu nejakého formátu. V záujme dosiahnuť čo najmenší objem dát výsledného streamu, sú často kodeky stratové. To znamená, že počas prevodu dochádza ku strate kvality signálu. Bezstratové kodeky sú lepšie, ale ich kompresné pomery sú malé. Príkladom kodeku je napr. DivX, XviD, LAME a pod. Niektoré multimediálne dátové toky musia obsahovať obidvoje – audio aj video dáta, a často aj nejakú formu metadát, ktoré zabezpečia ich synchronizáciu. Pre takýto multimediálny dátový tok je potrebné aby boli všetky tri zložky uložené spolu v prenositeľnej forme, v tzv. kontajneri. Príkladom takéhoto kontajnera je napr. AVI, ASF, MP4, MPG.

Formát – ktorý je najlepší?

Už vieme čo je kodek, poďme sa preto pozrieť na definíciu formátu. Aj formáty digitalizovaného zvuku delíme na nekomprimované (zaberajú na disku viac miesta) a komprimované, ktoré sú pri porovnateľnej kvalite menšie a sú vhodné aj na prenos po internete. Formáty bez kompresie ukladajú zvukové dáta v takej podobe ako boli získané digitalizáciou. Formáty s kompresiou tieto dáta ďalej upravujú. Kompresné formáty sa rozdeľujú na stratové a bezstratové. Bezstratové kompresie odstraňujú len istú časť dát tak, aby bolo možné vrátiť súbor do originálneho stavu. Stratové kompresie odstraňujú väčšie množstvo dát, takže sa nemôžeme vrátiť k pôvodnej kvalite. Príkladom stratového formátu je napr. MP3, Vorbis, WMA a pod. Príkladom bezstratového: FLAC, Monkey Audio, WavPack a iné.

Komprimujeme s rozumom

Jedným z najobľúbenejších a najrozšírenejších formátov komprimovaného zvuku je nepochybne stratový formát MP3. Najväčšou jeho slabinou je však jeho jasne obmedzená kvalita zvuku pri veľkosti výsledného súboru 10-16% z originálu. Kedže MP3 kompresia funguje na princípe znalostí psychoakustiky, v mp3 sa zložky zvuku ktoré by sme aj tak nepočuli, vymažú. Základná veličina, ktorá ovplyvňuje kvalitu mp3 súboru je tzv. bitrate – rýchlosť dátového toku. Čím je bitrate vyšší, tým je lepšia kvalita. U audio CD je bitrate 1,4 Mb/s, súbor mp3 s kvalitou považovanou za vyhovujúcu má bitrate 128 kb/s. Veľmi dôležitým faktorom vplývajúcim na kvalitu je aj vzorkovacia frekvencia. V tomto prípade platí, že čím vyššia frekvencia je použitá, tým vyššia bude aj kvalita výsledného súboru. V praxi sa bežne využíva frekvencia 44 kHz – voľba vyšších frekvencií je pre ľudské ucho prakticky nerozoznateľná.

Výber je na vás

Mnoho poslucháčov formát MP3 opúšťa a uprednostňuje bezstratový FLAC, ktorý žiadne dáta nevypúšťa. Princíp jeho fungovanie sa často prirovnáva ku komprimačným programom typu WinRAR alebo WinZip, s tým rozdielom, že FLAC pracuje s nižším stupňom kompresie (60-70 % z originálu) a špecializuje sa výhradne na hudbu. Medzi niekoľko funkčných a v praxi používaných systémov bezstratovej kompresie audio dát patrí aj systém Monkey’s Audio. Jeho najväčšou výhodou je dosahovanie tých najlepších kompresných pomerov pri stále prijateľných nárokoch na výkon počítača. Kvalita zvuku ostáva nezmenená, no veľkosť skomprimovaného súboru je takmer polovičná. Pri použití maximálnej kompresie tak možno jedno CD zredukovať na jeho polovičnú veľkosť. Na rozdiel od formátov so stratovou kompresiou je súbory možné kedykoľvek navrátiť do pôvodného stavu a to bez akejkoľvek straty kvality. Dobrou alternatívou bezstratovej kompresie dát je aj formát WawPack. Vďaka hybridnej kompresie dokáže vytvoriť dva súbory: jeden s kvalitnou kompresiou a druhý s dátami, ktoré boli stratené. Ďalšou jeho prednosťou je, že podporuje viackanálový zvuk a je preto vhodný najmä k ukladaniu hudby z DVD Audio diskov.

Now that Amarok can read replay gain tags from almost all the files that it can read metadata from, I feel replay gain support in Amarok is pretty much there.  And, yes, all this will be in Amarok 2.1.

A small caveat: the reading of replay gain tags from MP4 files only works if Amarok was built against libMP4v2.  Amarok uses its own (home-brewed?) code for reading MP4 tags when it can’t find libMP4v2 at build-time, but it doesn’t support freeform tags and I don’t see the point of implementing that support when libMP4v2 does the job.

Amarok 2.1 will support all the file formats that Amarok 1.4’s replay gain script did (and more), apart from Musepack (mpc).  Ironically, this is because of Musepack’s native support for replay gain – rather than abusing metadata tags to store the replay gain information, Musepack has a special field in the file header to specify the values.  However, TagLib doesn’t let us at this field, so we’re a bit stuck.

So the state of replay gain support in Amarok is that, for files in the main collection or elsewhere on your computer’s filesystem (so not streaming media and not portable music players), replay gain tags (both album and track mode) will be read from the following formats:

• MP3 (as written by mp3gain/aacgain, Foobar2000 and Mutagen/Quod Libet – yes, there are three different ways of writing the tags to MP3 files)
• OGG Vorbis (as written by vorbisgain and anything compatible)
• OGG FLAC (assuming the tags are stored in the same way as in OGG Vorbis)
• OGG Speex (assuming the tags are stored in the same way as in OGG Vorbis)
• FLAC (as written by flac [with it's --replay-gain switch] and anything compatible)
• WMA/ASF (as written by the Amarok 1.4 replay gain script)
• MP4 (as written by aacgain and anything compatible, providing Amarok was built with libMP4v2)
• WavPack (assuming the tags are stored in a similar way to how mp3gain stores them in MP3 files)
• TrueAudio (assuming the tags are stored in a similar way to how Foobar2000 or QuodLibet/Mutagen store the tags in MP3 files)

In addition, Amarok will use the track mode tags (or the album mode ones if there aren’t any track mode tags) to adjust the gain during playback.  I haven’t added an option to switch to album mode (or even disable it, if you really want to) yet, but that will come.  I just have to figure out where it should go in the user interface…

Of course, this is only half the functionality provided by the Amarok 1.4 replay gain script.  That also parsed and tagged files in the playlist.  This could be implemented nicely as a script (I certainly don’t believe it belongs in the core of Amarok).  But that’s for another day, and probably another person.

So… no-one responded with anything helpful on my last post.  There was a Dot article about the semantic desktop (and hence Nepomuk), however.

On to more interesting things.  I’ve got fed up recently with changing volumes for different songs.  I actually notice it more on my portable MP3 player, but Amarok 2 has long bugged me by not having any Replay Gain support.  And I’ve been thinking about implementing it for about the same amount of time.  Yesterday, I finally got around to starting it.

The first hurdle I came up against was how to get the information I needed from the files.  If you run mp3gain or aacgain on your MP3 or MP4 files, or if you have MusePack files, there’s no problem since the information about changing the volume is stored in such a way that it is interpreted by the decoder, and so Amarok doesn’t need to do anything.  But with other file formats, and when you use other tools for calculating the gain for MP3 and MP4 files, the information is stored as tags.  Fine, we can read tags.  We can store the information we read in the database, and then access it later.  But we’re left with the question of what tags we’re looking for.

The official Replay Gain standard is incredibly unhelpful in this regard.  It gives you all sorts of details about the mathematics behind calculating how much gain to apply to a track, but almost nothing about how to store or retreive that value.  On top of that, it is woefully out of date, not having been updated since 2001.

OK, so over to the Replay Gain page on the slightly more active Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase wiki.  However, which tag format (ID3v2 or APE, say) the relevant tags are stored in by various tools and for various formats is about as detailed as it gets.  None of the web pages for the various tools are any more helpful.

The vorbisgain man page is more forthcoming: the relevant tags are REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN, REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK, REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN and REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK. The REPLAYGAIN_*_GAIN values are in decibels and have ” dB” appended to the end. The REPLAYGAIN_*_PEAK values are floats (no further information given).

So I turned to the old Amarok 1.4 Replay Gain script.  This is what I found:

• Vorbis and FLAC works as described above. To get the peak gain relative to the adjusted gain, you apparently need to take the log of the float, base 10, and multiply the result by 20.
• MP3s can have the data stored in one of several ways (apart from the method detailed above, which we don’t need to concern ourselves with):
  • In the APEv2 tags in the same manner as with Vorbis (possibly not all uppercase)
  • In the ID3v2 TXXX (user comment) tags in the same manner as Vorbis (possibly not all uppercase) – the TXXX frames have a description field and value field, which are used for the tag name and the tag value. Total of 4 TXXX tags to store all the values. These are written by Foobar2000.
  • In the ID3v2.4 RVA2 tags (only Quod Libet does this AFAIK). Each tag has an identification string, into which Quod Libet writes the values “album” and “track”. The format of the rest of the frame is specified in section 4.11 of the ID3v2.4 frames specification.
• MP4s are done in the same way as Vorbis.
• AAC (not in an MP4 container): APEv2, presumeably in the same manner as MP3 APE tags (the ReplayGain script doesn’t support AAC files).
• MusePack: values are stored in the header in fields designated for the purpose. Should be supported natively by the decoder, according to the Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase, but the 1.4 ReplayGain script stil reads these values. The peak value apparently needs to be multiplied by 2 to get the peak gain relative to the adjusted gain.
• WMA: same as Vorbis, stored in the ASF tags (this may well be only files tagged by the ReplayGain script itself).
• WavPack: stored in APEv2 tags, presumeably in the same manner as MP3 APE tags (the ReplayGain script doesn’t support WavPack files).
• MOD files: Foobar2000 stores these in APEv2 format, presumeably in the same manner as MP3 APE tags (the ReplayGain script doesn’t support MOD files).

Don’t you feel all enlightened now?

O Winamp sempre foi meu player de audio favorito, desde sempre. Ultimamente ele vem ficando cada vez mais pesado, consumindo mais memória e CPU. Procurando por algumas alternativas mais leves encontrei o Aimp2, um player leve e cheio de recursos, como conversão de formatos, editor de tags, multi linguagens (inclusive Português do Brasil).

• Trabalha com várias playlists em abas
• Tem diversos plugins e skins para baixar
• A qualidade do som é superior a do Winamp
• A interface é muito bonita

Suporte a uma enorme quantidade de formatos

MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC / MP+, AAC, AC3, Ogg, FLAC,APE, WavPack, Speex, WAV, CDA, WMA, S3M, XM, MOD, IT, MO3, MTM, UMX

Um recurso muito interessante é que você pode colocar o Aimp2 para tocar sua músicas e ele desliga quando terminar. Muito útil para ir dormir ouvindo suas músicas preferidas.

Converte suas músicas para os formatos wma, mp3, wav, ogg

Converte o seu CD de aúdio para MP3, OGG, WAV ou WMA

Download aqui.

foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

• Audio formats supported natively: MP1,
  MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV,
  AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA.
• More audio formats supported through optional components, official or third-party.
• Full unicode support.
• Customizable user interface layout (new in version 0.9.5). View screenshots…
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component. Read more…
• ReplayGain support – both playback and calculation.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

Download: foobar2000 0.9.5
View: Release notes
Homepage: foobar2000.org

Way the hack didn’t I trip over WavPack (wv) earlier — it’s been around for some time now and astonishingly ultimate. To make it short and obvious (see hydrogenaudio.org for complete list):

Pros

• Open sourc
• Good efficiency (fwd is even better than mp3’s on foobar2000)
• Hybrid/lossy mode (see below)
• Tagging support (ID3v1, APEv2 tags)
• Replay Gain compatible (which is no deal with fb2k anyway, but still)

Cons

• Limited hardware player support
• does take long to encode with optimal settings (not really because one time procedure)

Other features

• Supports embedded CUE sheets
• Includes MD5 hashes for quick integrity checking
• Can encode in both symmetrical and assymmetrical modes
• Supports multichannel audio and high resolutions
• Fits the Matroska container
• streaming support
• Error robustness

So it’s open source! Most distros even come along with WavPack preinstalled. The only other lossless formats that I know are open sourced are two: FLAC which has bad tagging support and Shorten (to put it short: out dated). MAC (Monkey Audio Codec, ape) has an open sourced version but it’s not developed any longer.

The next great feature is hybrid mode which means you decode to lossy small file and an additional file containing “the rest” of the information. Only one other format is capable of this: OptimFROG (ofr) in DualMode. That means, putting both files together you get your 100% original back. The lossy file can be used entirely on it’s own. While encoding there is a second file, called correction file, that stores the difference between lossy and original — compressed that is. So what that means is you don’t have to convert your files each time you’re to shove them onto your portable. The only bad thing is you need to ensure the device can decode (read: play) them.

To give an example: If you convert a 27.5 MB ofr file to wv, hybrid enabled with lossy bitrate set to 192, you’ll get one 6.31 MB sized .wv file and a second 22.8 MB sized .wvc file. It took 12 min. 15 sec (playtime 4:25). Insane settings where: Compression Mode “high”, Processing Mode “6″ (best encoding quality), Hybrid Lossy Mode “192kbps”. When you open the .wv file only in fb2k it’ll handle correction files automatically (see picture). However moving the file with foobar2000’s dialog “” will only move .wv files. I cannot speak for other software players but this way it’s just easy to handle two qualities of one file — one hifi one and on “to go”! After I now have converted an entire album here are the approximate file sizes comparing MAC, OptimFROG and WavPack and MP3/OggVorbis as lossy counterpart to “portable wv” (to be added to .ape/.ofr):

Tagging: Unlike FLAC it uses APEv2 (or ID3v1) so tags can be used with most players, software and portable devices’ ones, without intervention.

While I ran encoding test’s with foobar2000 (which has decoding WavPack “build-in” by the way) I noticed when converting from, say, OptimFROG to WavPack fb2k went right at it. No temporary wav files as with OptimFROG to MAC, for example! But mind you it does take a long time if you use optimization for file size and quality. It seams to be somewhere around 0.7x (slightly slower than plain play time). I don’t see why this really is an issue because in most cases you’ll only encode once as it’s true for all lossless formats anyway.

Resources:

• Technical description at hydrogenaudio
• lossless format comparison at hydrogenaudio
• WavPack homepage
• foobar2000 wiki

Foobar2000 is a lightweight, minimalist audio player and best of all it is freeware.

Despite the fact that foobar2000 can run on hardware that other players (like iTunes) would instantly kill, it’s no less a great audio player for even the most powerful computer. Foobar2000 is fully configurable as well as wonderfully compact and efficient. For example, I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, and foobar2000 lets you easily set them up to do pretty much whatever you like.

If you’re still trying to find your favorite audio player, or if you’re like me and what you want out of your audio player is constantly changing, the newest version of foobar2000 is really worth checking out, especially if your main concern is playing high quality audio quickly and easily.

Download: Foobar2000 0.9
Homepage: Foobar2000

NOTE: Windows 2000, XP or newer is now required.

Features

• Audio formats supported: MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA.
• Full unicode support.
• Advanced tagging capabilities.
• Support for transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external commandline encoder executables for different output formats).
• ReplayGain support – both playback and calculation.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.