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Music Media

X11AMP changes name to XMMS and gets sponsored 119

Posted by Hemos from the takin'care-of-business dept.
Crocodile writes "X11AMP chaned name to XMMS (X MultiMedia System) and is now sponsored by 4Front Technologies Read more about it in the press release. You can download xmms .9 final as well. "
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X11AMP changes name to XMMS and gets sponsored More

X11AMP changes name to XMMS and gets sponsored

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  • The name change may also be partly due to AOL buying out Nullsoft. If AOL wanted to, they could sue 4front for trademark violations. Hence the name XMMS. Besides, what does a name mean? Not much. X11Amp was essentially a rip-off of WinAmp's name.
  • Hi! What about mpeg video? Audio is too simple, guys.

  • I'll bet it has a lot to do with the CD-ROM you're ripping from. A lot of drives (especially IDE) don't do good digital audio extraction (DAE). If you're getting pops and jumps in the sound, that's the problem. Try cdparanoia under Linux (don't have URL handy, sorry) - it does its own error correction, and I've never had a bad rip with it, short of a disc that looked like it was stored in 60-grit sandpaper for a while.

    As far as the underwater sounds, that's the fault of your MP3 encoder - try a different one, or encode at a higher bit rate (I'd recommend at least 160Kbps, and preferably 256Kbps) to eliminate this. Some encoders just sound like crap. I've had good results with BladeEnc, though.
  • I've found that if you want uber-high quaity and very fast cd ripping, using a DVD drive is the way to go. I use cdparanoia with mine, and it rips in 1/3rd the time of my 24x generic brand IDE cdrom. I think it has a lot to do with the narrower laser and better fine-grain control over the positioning.

    But for whatever reason, it works great!

  • Last time I checked, xanim had support for mpg movies. Kindof. Look at http://smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu/xanim/home.html It's also got a lot of avi decompression codecs available.

    According to the web page, it currently supports only type 1 frames, with no audio. But Mark Podlipec (the author) could always use help in making it work better.

  • Well, since it's GPL'd code, if enough people want ALSA support, they can write it themselves.

  • 4Front's Response (long) (Score:4)

    by 4front ( 59135 ) on Friday June 11, 1999 @12:44PM (#1855038)
    Hi,

    Here's the one and only message you'll get from 4Front and you can decide for yourself.

    4Front is basically just two people: Hannu Savolainen and Dev Mazumdar (myself). Hannu is the
    author of OSS/Free which is 100% GPL'ed. We gave p lucerative "DAY JOBS", me at IBM and Hannu at an engineering company in Finland. Today, we are making less that what we can be making if we
    were working at day jobs and we are decent Linux programmers. We really like what we do - developing OSS drivers for Linux/UNIX.

    Crocodile, Fatal and Peter are good friends of ours and they are "poor" guys and don't even make
    any signficant money. X11amp was stagnating because these guys were busy doing other things so I offered them some money to basically get them motivated to work full time on XMMS. Nobody who downloaded X11amp has offered a plug nickel to these guys!. We stepped up to the plate, and offered them a small token from our meager earnings. We each make less than $60,000 a year - we're not Redhat or VA with millions!. We work damn hard at supporting our customers and who else gives you a product for $20-$30 with free tech support for 2 years and free upgrades for 3 years?. Not Redhat, not Microsoft, not IBM,not Corel and not Caldera, not SuSE, Not Corel. Which two-man company have you seen that can support so many different soundcards, so many different OSs and keep up with the pace of Linux kernel releases?

    If you care to see what our customers are saying, visit http://www.opensound.com/guest.html
    I can also share with you what our customers are raving about our tech support (email me!)

    So now that these guys have joined 4Front, are you going to deny them the right to earn a living????
    BTW, Crocodile makes some money selling OSS/Linux licenses in Sweden and all the proceeds go to him, Peter and Fatal.

    The number of contributed plugins aren't coming in at the rate at which some of the Winamp or other Windows plugins are coming (says that OpenSource isn't up to keeping pace with Windows in the media dept).

    So basically, yes, we are interested in getting XMMS working on all the versions of UNIX we support in OSS (besides Linux) but guys, OSS/Free is GPL, XMMS is GPL.

    WHAT PART OF GPL DO YOU NOT GET?.

    Go ahead and modify OSS/Free and XMMS all you want. Infact, we'd be too happy if you contributed any improvements to either one.

    As for ALSA, we don't know if we can support it since ALSA's asound.h is GPL'ed which means that there can be no "closed sourced" application development. If Linus makes ALSA the standard driver in the kernel, so be it. We'll probably shutdown OSS for Linux and concentrate on other UNIX systems. In anycase, DO NOT CONFUSE OSS/Free and OSS/Linux. The commercial OSS drivers are waaay ahead of OSS/Free - Virtual Mixer, shadow devices for full duplex, more number of sound cards and a working ESS Solo-1/Maestro driver - we used the same docs available to everybody else - neither the ALSA nor OSS/Free have it working - we do!

    We have no beef with ALSA guys, we wish them well and perhaps there's enough room in Linux for both APIs - we have never said anything derogatory to ALSA - while they continue to spread FUD about OSS - like no new technologies no new development. All I can say is you ain't seen what we've done with OSS for some of our customers who pay for our services to customise OSS. Here's a small sampling of our successes:

    - OSS is used at a defence contractor building helicopter simulations using OSS with Terratec EWS64 soundcards with full DREAM 9407 working with 4 channel surround sound - but that driver isn't for sale to the general public!.

    - OSS is used by Marquette Medical systems to build patient monitoring systems using VxWorks.

    - OSS is used by Lockheed martin to build voice recognition systems for the next generation of battle tanks.

    - OSS is used by Broardcast.com, ZDTV, and by the US Govt and yes, including Microsoft!!!!

    - 4Front has donated OSS to the East Palo Alto Inner City Development Center for educating inner city youths.

    - 4Front has donated free OSS licenses to all the major Linux audio developers - Alan Cox, Dave Phillips (Linux audio apps website), Sam Lantiga (SDL/Loki) Even some of the ALSA developers like P.J Leonard, all the KDE developers, all the FreeBSD developers. Luminaries like David Korn. Plus we're helping iD Software with Quake3 (see Zoid's .plan).

    So the question is are we a Microsoft? Anybody can write a driver - we stepped in and tried to do the right thing, and now that we're making a few bucks (less than what Linus makes, and out of that we're giving some to the XMMS guys) and you're accusing us of Microsoft like tactics?.

    I just want to say that if you like OSS/Linux, buy it and you'll be a happy customer, if you absolutely hate our guts, use ALSA or OSS/Free or why not write a driver under Joe's Sound System?. Also please explain why are OSS licenses being hotly pirated on irc if it totally sucked? - obviously we're doing something right!

    4Front has been one of the first software companies developing for Linux and gpl'ing our products (we did give away SoftOSS, Yamaha OPL3-SAx and fixed up certain other drivers in OSS/Freee). Why are people so dead against us and not others like Perl, Cygnus, Scriptics, Sendmail - these apps are essential services for Linux and still they are "closed source products".????.
    If you think 4Front is a monopoly, so is Sendmail, so is Scriptics, so is every stinking successful Linux company - Redhat/SuSE/VA/Caldera/PHT. You have a choice - OSS/Linux or OSS/Free or ALSA or Roll-your-own sound driver (like Corel Netwinder, EMPeg, etc)!.

    BTW, PLEASE BUY the JULY ISSUE OF Linux Journal, you'll read about our philosophy in an interview by Dave Phillips. A shameless plug at last :) (disclaimer: we're not making any money of LJ sales!)

    Best regards
    Dev Mazumdar


  • They replaced Nitrane with Frauenhoffer's inferior decoder in 2.20. I also had more decoder bugs, and higher CPU usage. Nitrane is back in v2.23 however, so go download the new version.

    I'm not sure exactly why this all happened, but my suspicion is that they pulled Nitrane after being sued by the Amp people, and put it back in after being bought by AOL (since they now have the AOL legal muscle to defend them).
  • It took me about five minutes to "port" the x11amp-alsa 0.3 driver to xmms. (Basically, rewriting some of the functions to their new names) It worked fine, and was fairly seamless. Those crying about conspiracies should actually try the code before complaining that OSS is going to somehow own this GPL'ed program.


    So they want to make some money. So what. You don't like it? Use ALSA or OSS/Free.


    Maybe if you guys would spent some time looking at code, you'd realize that (a) OSS can't 'steal' xmms/x11amp. (b) ALSA works fine, and but it's not stable, and thus not in the xmms/x11amp source distribution and (c) if you want ALSA to work, why not help the guy coding the plugin?

  • This is the main problem I find with GQmpeg. I like it (although the interface is hopelessly confusing at best) but I simply won't, won't, won't, won't use non-Free software if I can avoid it. X11amp is Free, therefore I use it.

    On a side note, the mpg123 input plugin for x11amp has been GPL'd by the author of mpg123. I've thought seriously about taking that, writing an mpg123-compatible frontend, and creating the Free version of mpg123. Either that, or writing a frontend or wrapper script for freeamp which exactly mimics mpg123, so that GQmpeg isn't dependent on non-Free software.

  • I use OSS/Free. From what I can tell it seems to be a good driver, and I'm fairly happy with it. (There are a few features that I would like to see, but I don't consider adding features a big issue, because the source is open. If I decide I need a feature badly enough, I'll write it myself.) I don't have anything personal against 4 Front as a company, but I have decided against OSS/Linux for the following reasons:
    • I have been burned too many times by closed source software.
    • I prefer OpenSource software to propriatary software. If given a choice, I'd take the OpenSource product.
    • I try to avoid closed-source software for any application that I rely upon.
    • I refuse to
      • run closed-source software as root
      • insert closed source software into my kernel

    This is not to say that I am against paying good money for good software, but I expect it to come with source. Unfortunately, OSS/Linux must be inserted into the kernel. By my above resolves I cannot use it, and it is useless to me because it's closed source.

    I know we live in a world of NDAs and other restrictions. Honestly, I think this is the card manufacturer's problem, and not yours... If they don't want to open specs, than they don't deserve Linux support! I consider source-code availibility an essetial feature when running a maintainable system. That is waht makes software "free" (libre) not it's price tag (gratis)!

    In summary: I don't mind paying good money for good software, but I expect it to come with source.


  • If you want ALSA support and don't see it
    happening fast enough, two suggestions:

  • If you want ALSA support and it isn't happening
    fast enough, two suggestions:

    - Write it yourself, submit it, and
    post it on a web page somewhere.

    - Pay someone (in cash, beer, gratitude)
    to do it.

    It's not only GPL'd code, it's good code (I
    spent the night working with it). It can't be "stolen" or "Microsofted".

  • Re:drat! upgrade conflict! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GTK/GLIB 1.2.2 RPMs for both RH 5.x & 6.0 is available at ftp.xmms.org
  • Personally I don't think it's a big issue, Linux is still a bit low on applications for sound. Since 4Front make sound drivers for Linux it is in their best interest to have lots of audio applications of high quality. Anyway, it's a GPL'ed application, if they try to make it proprietary someone can always fork the code and produce a ALSA friendly version.
  • mpg123 would give him the clicks and underwater sounds. Sorry for the offtopic, but what the hell is this? I've tried ripping my own MP3s at home and I always end up with this. I tried several different players, several different cds, on Linux, Windows and my Rio. The only reason I could come up with is that the speed of my machine had something to do with it? It's a P166. Somebody want to suggest the combination of software I can use to rip MP3s on my Redhat5.1 box?
  • Why don't we just call it 'Christmas' then? ;-)
  • Well, it seems that it's not reading my .x11amp
    stuff, including my skins. Of course, moving .x11amp to .xmms doesn't work either.

  • Re:Video? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is a very pressing point, to date I've only been able to find one mpeg movie player, that being mtv. It seems a shame to have 20 some mp3 players and only one movie player ;) If anyone can point me towards any more mpeg movie players I'd appreciate a link

  • Why do people have to abuse words. It handles only _one_ medium. The correct name is then "X Mono Medium System".

  • I wish 4Front would get off their collective arses and get what's already supported working right. I'd like to be able to use Jazz sometime with my AWE64 and external keyboard, please. :)
  • This version has support for real time scheduling, like 0.7. In order to use it for all users, the binary must be set setuid.

    Before it switches the effective uid to the real id in main.c, read_config is called. This makes the directory .xmms and .xmms/Skins owned by root.

    I'm not sure if this can be a security problem, but it's at least a bug. The configuration file can't be written to, then.

    I'll send a message to the developers...

    jamus
  • as was previously mentioned, x11amp has been using mpg123 since .9 ... so I doubt that is the root of his difficulties. it sounds like a lot of his mp3s are what is known as "cooked". there are applications designed to "uncook" the mp3s, to get rid of the odd popping and hissing.

    then again, a lot of mp3s are just ripped incorrectly.

    ~spot, [t1crew]

    "and yes, i do know way too much about mp3s."
  • Actually, the problem isn't the GNOME stuff (GTK+ and glib aren't technically GNOME stuff, though GNOME uses them; that's not my point though :)

    Anyway, the main problem is that people are requiring at least a specific patchlevel of a stable library. I know for a FACT that the last x11amp in cvs worked just fine with gtk+/glib 1.2.1 (what comes with RedHat 6) after you change the configure script. The later versions just add bug fixes. Sure, those bug fixes are probably good to have, but I don't think that an application should depend on you having a different stable patch level. It's somewhat understandable in devel, because then things are changing and you may be using a feature added in a certain version, but that's not the case here.

    So, protest to the app developers. And if you write apps yourself, make your requirements what they really are, not necessarily what you run. GTK+ apps should really only require gtk+ 1.2.0 unless you have a really good reason otherwise.

    Anyway, that's enough of my ranting for now
  • Okay, instead of preaching the dogma, I'll say that I happily and constantly recommend purchasing OSS around my department.

    The situation is simple. We have 150 Linux machines, all of them have sound cards. These machines have all been purchased from various companies over the past 3 years, and all run Linux and only Linux. Many of these machines don't have any decent specs as to what cards they run.

    Oh yeah, and we have a single sysadmin who needs to maintain all these machines, set up all these machines, handle department firefighting issues and maintain the other 50 non-Linux boxes.

    For 20$ a machine, sound is fire and forget. One out of every 10 will need more tweaking, maybe less. The alternative is to sit and tweak the kernel and isapnp until it starts working on each machine.

    The fact of the matter is that 4front made the black art of sound (esp PnP sound) under linux doable without taking out an afternoon for it.

    Because of that, they've gotten my money and will continue to get money from any one I know who says "Could you help me get sound working under my linux box".
  • I just thought I'd mention that I had the reverse situation a few months ago. A certain song gave the clicks and underwater sounds when being played in X11Amp0.9alpha2 (I think that was the version), but played perfectly in GQmpeg (the latest version at the time, which I happen to forget). A newer version of X11Amp plays the song well now, though.
  • Xanim has quite a view good, current codecs, needs better audio support, and soon Systems streams (mpeg w/ audio) will be supported. You should visit www.mpegtv.com and try that on for size...
  • http://xanim.va.pubnix.com [pubnix.com] is more up to date.
  • x11amp uses mpg123 to play the mp3's, bud. But x11amp requires X to be open and all that jazz. You cant get something for nothing.
  • Wasn't LokiSoft doing an LGPL'ed mpeg video player using the SDL toolkit? I don't know how well it works, though. And of course there's mpegtv. --- mjt
    -----------

  • Maybe there product is better than what you think.

    OSS/Free is not there product. OSS is there product. It support more HW than OSS/Free, have more feature,...

    Ok this is closed source. I love Free Software and really thingit is great but i don't think we will get rid of closed source sofware any time soon simply because it is easier to make money with closed source softwares.

    And if ALSA don't work with XMMS (ex-X11amp) then it may be better to add ALSA support to ESD (if it's not here) so any application using ESD can support ALSA through ESD.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Two if you count anything visual (the interface, sound visualisation etc) as a medium

  • 4frontal (Score:1)

    by ada ( 96036 )
    In the words of Barbara Kruger :money doesn't necessarily buy taste.

    On a postive note let us just hope that with the sponsorship deal and the impending name change to "X MultiMedia System" we get a sassy product stacked with features that don't just look good on hard copy but really deliver in fully audio glory. YUay MP3 streaming -- how groundbreaking [she said dryly].
  • Anyone else other than me see this as a microsoft-like tactic....

    Is it just me or is "microsoft-like tactic" always used in the sense "smart business move" here?

    If all of the estimated millions of Linux users would start buying a few MS shares each, perhaps we would soon own MS. Now wouldn't that be something.

  • Suspicious (Score:3)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Friday June 11, 1999 @05:59AM (#1855082)
    Anyone else other than me see this as a microsoft-like tactic to keep 4Front's relavence in the marketplace for their OpenSound system? With some of the talk kicking around about the base sound support in Linux 2.3 changing over to ALSA (a far superior -- and free -- system IMHO), maybe they just want to try to keep control of things.

    Maybe someone should submit patches to XMMS giving it native ALSA support...
  • Perhaps someone who knows could alleviate my fears here: if 4Front (who control the OSS sound drivers, mostly proprietary with a few that were contributed to the kernel code) now can exert control over the X11amp code (albeit GPL'd code), does that imply that X11amp's code is probably only going to support OSS special features, to the exclusion of ALSA? And does this therefore mean that someone is going to have to provide patches, etc. to take advantage of things that ALSA does differently?

    And while I'm on the topic, when is ALSA going to become the official sound system? Or have I misunderstood that as well? (I was reminded of this by OSS's press release.)

    (I am an experienced UNIX admin but I know nothing about sound, software- or hardware-wise.)
  • I agree, I love gtk as a widget set, but x11amp doesn't need it. I liked the old version with the old file open dialog, and the new beta would crash every time I moved the window. I hope x11amp, er, "xmms" doesn't become some bloated program that doesn't work as nicely as the old one.
  • The old x11amp is my favorite and most used Linux app, not counting xterm, tcsh, and
    gcc of course. I just love the program. I'm still baffled as to why they went GPL with it.
    They didn't have to, they could of made a lot of money selling such a quality product.


    They went GPL with it and didn't sell it for the simple reason that they're committed to supporting the linux community. And no, they didn't have to, but if they didn't, someone else would come along and written a GPL MP3 player, and we'd all be using that. As it is, I'm glad I can use X11Amp...err, Xmmsmsmsmmmsmsm (or whatnot). It's a great product.

    Sam Jooky
  • I've mirrored ftp.xmms.org at ftp://ftp.ameth.org/pub/mirrors/ftp.xmms.org/. Feel free to grab XMMS from us if the actual server is a bit slow.
  • x11amp has used mpg123 since the first 0.9 alpha versions.

  • Anyone like to support AlsaPlayer [alsa-project.org]?

    Hehe ;-)
  • No it is not. The engine in mpg123 based, and has been for a while.

  • I thought x11amp was a great name. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    XMMS? Huh?

    I thought x11amp was a great name.

    The old x11amp is my favorite and most used Linux app, not counting xterm, tcsh, and gcc of course. I just love the program. I'm still baffled as to why they went GPL with it. They didn't have to, they could of made a lot of money selling such a quality product.

    I haven't tried xmms.9.final, but I did try their new beta about a month ago. They added the EQ feature and now the widget set is Gtk, while I do love Gtk I thought it was a step backwards for x11amp. Personally I liked the old x11amp. What do other people think?

    With yesterdays ALSA post, it now seems like OSS free isn't dead and not without support. So if ALSA is going to win any distribution space it is going to have to earn it. Still it would be nice if these guys could work together.

  • I agree, (and am slightly worried) that X11Amp might be manipulated to be a "killer app" for OSS, to the exclusion of ALSA, but this funding thing isn't necessarily a New thing - for as long as I can remember, x11amp has had an OSS banner ad on their site. Not a rotating ad including an OSS ad, a static OSS ad.

    It may be that this new development is just a codification of a previous agreement.

    Regardless, the new name scares me. Hello? I got WinAMP for one reason - to play MP3s. The other formats were nice, but who wants music in .wav anymore? Did I ever see a TiMidity plugin to make MIDI bearable? Can't someone code up a S3M player like MOD4WIN [mod4win.com] that plays 'em *nice* instead of jusr porting MIDAS again? And the latest versions of WinAMP have a (*gasp*) browser, no doubt for "synchronised multimedia". Call me a luddite, but I just want something that plays MP3s and plays 'em well. (Nitrane is a hell of a decoder, wish the rest of the product was as good).

    I fear x11amp going down the same path. Yes, plugins are nice. Yes, configurability is nice. But if I wanted to play other formats, I'd just get a player for those. Please don't let bloat invade my favourite MP3 player..

    (P.S. Who'd be willing to pay the WinAMP registration fee (or some similar amount of money) for use of a Nitrane decoder module for x11amp?

  • X11amp (now xmms) has had alsa support for several months now. It uses a plugin architechture, so the code for inputs (mp3, wav, mods, ect.), and the outputs (OSS, esound, and alsa are all supported) are all plugins.
  • I'm glad to see 4-Front diversify themselves somewhat away from just doing OSS. I hope they are planning a commercial product based on this.

    Being a commercial entity that basicly "owns" much of the current, standard Linux sound drivers that may be eventually replaced by ALSA in many Linux distributions and the 2.3 kernel, they seem to have a nice outlook:

    "It works on most unix systems with sound, preferable OSS, but on i386 systems, any sounddrivers that is OSS compatible should work without problems"

    They did, however, take down the ALSA output plugin, which is at http://iznogood.bohemians.org/

    Other plugins are here [x11amp.org]

    I hope they are saving their nuts for Winter...

  • GQmpeg (Score:3)

    by DaKrushr ( 16560 ) on Friday June 11, 1999 @06:25AM (#1855097)
    How come nobody seems to know about this great MP3 player?

    It's been GPL'd for ages - has really nice skin support (including shaped skins), is fast, doesn't crash, and is just generally cool - and it isn't a copy of a Windows program :).

    GQmpeg/GQview [netpedia.net]

  • And its not now. In fact it specifically says that XMMS is best used with OSS or an OSS-compatible sound system. I could be mistaken, but I don't remember that being there before.

    And in response to the other reply mentioning it being a good business tactic, I don't think it really is. A good business tactic, in my book, is doing everything you can to make your product the best one available. 4Front has never really been a company like that -- I've never had anything but trouble with their software, whereas when I decided nine months or so ago to switch my systems to the ALSA driver the only complexity I had was getting rid of OSS/Free.

    Its definately a Microsoft tactic to do something else to push focus on your software when a potential competitor is doing a better job creating a similar product.

    I downloaded the source for XMMS. I think its a perfect example that I got the ESD support, the Gnome support and the software in there, but not the ALSA support.

    I think my point was a legitimate one. If the ALSA support is buggy, why wouldn't the developers try to fix it. Bet that won't happen now.
  • The hell they could. "amp" was around before winamp. And it's still one of my two mp3 players of choice.
  • Take a look at this other press release [opensound.com] from 4Front. Looks familiar? The OSS Application Group announced it was swallowing up X11Amp over a YEAR ago, and was renaming it to "OSSPlayer". Why release the same "news" under another name?

    Sounds like someone's trying to create news where there's none. BTW, I never saw a linux version of OSSPlayer, I seem to remember however, a BSD version of it, which was really just a port of X11Amp back when the source wasn't available.

    By renaming the program to Xmmsmsmsms and dropping the "OSSPlayer" they tried to choke any chances of starting a Sound API war! Too bad it didn't work.

    IMHO, the Linux sound API sucks whichever one you use try to playback 6 channels at a time in a CS4232(6,8) chip, why you can't? whoah!.

    ALSA has a rather small portion of new code compared to its former existence as the Linux Ultrasound Project. While both of these projects support a wide range of codecs, there's very little Synth support though ALSA has better synth support (great legacy GF(GFA) 1 synth support). They both fail miserably in supporting newer synth chips like the DREAM synths (SAM9407 for one).

    The only sound API that will succeed is the one that can provide a wider range of codec, synth and midi support on a wide range of soundboard. And that will require manufacturer support.

  • | mpg123 would give him the clicks and underwater
    | sounds.

    I had this problem with mpg123 a while back. An upgrade of mpg123 fixed it (I believe version .59o had this problem, p and q do not.)
  • I don't think it's such a big distinction. Most of the big Open Source software packages today use distributed development. That's part of the goal of open source, you can take the source, modify it, and send it back to the creator improved. The ALSA plugin is part of the standard X11amp distribution. It is a part of the product, and I'm sure the guy's name is in the CREDITS file. To me that leaves the distinction as sort of splitting hairs. Next you're going to tell me if I go out and write support for a new file system in the linux kernel, the submit it to the kernel maintainers, and they put it in that "It's not like linux has been supporting the new filesystem."
  • Well, thankfully, the version of X11amp that I have right now still works just fine for me, so I can afford to wait 'til RPMs of the newer gtk+ and glib are out. Just because a newer version is available is seldom the best reason to upgrade...

    I have the Soundblaster Live! beta driver...is that OSS or ALSA, or neither? I'm not sure what the difference is between the two, and which one the beta driver would count as...
  • If the only errors you get are that gtk+ and glib >= 1.2.2 are needed, but you only have 1.2.1 of each, using --nodeps is perfectly safe.
  • Okay, the ALSA-Plugin is not in the official distribution, because it is quite buggy.

    But why has the link on the new page to this project disappeared?

  • XMMS will support multiple video formats (including DVD) in the future according to the developer I've talked with. Hence, one of the reasons for the name change. X11amp was a rather restricting name.

    mrOpie
  • It will support video in time, including DVD. Hence one of the reasons for the change of name.

    mrOpie
  • The main reason for these bugs is because they had to make a LOT of changes in the code for multi-platform support. They are fixing a lot of these as we speak. Look for 0.91 in a couple of days (possibly Sunday).

    mrOpie
  • It handles only one medium AT THE MOMENT. It will support video in the future.

    mrOpie
  • Real G2
    Real Player
    xmovie
    MpegTV ------ registered
    xmms
    x11amp
    ripperX
    mpeg123
    mpeg_play

    and I have plenty of porno VCD
    have a nice day everyone! :) *farts*
  • There has been a GPL'd mp3 player for some time now. eMusic. http://www.icom.net/~smelecat/emp3/ [icom.net]. I package it for debian, and it works quite nice.
    --
    Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/
  • What?! You don't use Rasca?! :)

    Cya
  • if an app has featuritis, the best way to do it is in plugins.
    plugins allow the bloat to be minimal, unless the plugin is in use, the only bloat is the hooks to allow the plugins, plus plugins are cool, they offer great expansion options without ruining compatibility.
    the only problem with plugins is storage space, but that is a much smaller problem than having loads of code in ram that does nothing, and seriously the amount of space needed for plugins, especially in an mp3 player) is nowhere near the amount of data that they are needed to process.

  • Oh yes! I really need that. Gee, I wonder what I might need next. Oh, now I know. I need a bottle opener with a shoe on it. And a knife with which I can both cut meat and read my mail. And maybe a skate board keyboard too. Can't live without.

  • OSS is okay. They make sound very easy. Even the binary-only method is better than nothing, given an NDA-infested world. Of course, completely free and open is good too.

    When I wanted to get my linux system to do sound, it was a big pain in the butt. I am lazy. I have better things to do than spend two days figuring out how sound worked. I had a stock rh5.1 system, my sound card wasn't supported, and OSS was fantastic. I gave my $20 and was very satistified. I had banged my head enough with the isapnp business.

    Btw - Later, as I learned about compiling my kernel, I compiled in OSS/free support. I would still suggest a newbie try OSS if they have trouble with sound.
  • See my previous post. X11amp already supports alsa.

    Second, I wouldn't say OOS drivers are proprietary with a few kernel contributions. Perhaps 10 cards (mostly the SBAWE32/64 series) are OSS commercial only. Most soundcards OSS-Linux supports are supported by OSS-Free.
  • Maybe you need to learn the difference between conspiracy theories and business decisions. If I were 4Front and I were also employing the maintainers of X11amp-now-XMMS, it would be a great temptation to influence the code to some extent to support my own product. Heck, I expect some OSS-specific stuff, since they're so closely related now. I just hoped that ALSA wouldn't be excluded.

    On which side of the bed did you get up this morning? Sheesh.
  • XMMS's output plugin system allows the use of native ALSA, Solaris, and other drivers to be used.

    Very nicely done.


    Also, ALSA will (according to Alan Cox) be the (or is it an?) official sound driver included in the Linux kernel 2.3. Whee!

    jf
  • Yes, but that plugin is made by another person not associated with X11amp (now xmms). It's not as if X11amp has been supporting ALSA this whole time. An important clarification, methinks.
  • Ah, wasn't aware. Thanks.

    And perhaps my view of the OSS/Free source is tainted by the fact that my laptop's sound card is one of the commercial ones. *smiles* But thanks for the info.
  • I meant to say "the only working driver for my laptop's sound card is one of OSS's commercial versions."

    (should have hit the preview button, I know)

  • I have an mp3 which causes mpg123 to print error messages, while otherwise playing just fine. These messages cause gqmpeg to crash quite reliably (or at least they did so last time I tried it).

  • Re:Suspicious (Score:3)

    by Lface ( 23903 ) on Friday June 11, 1999 @06:37AM (#1855126) Homepage
    > Maybe someone should submit patches to XMMS giving it native ALSA support...

    x11amp, no wait, xmms uses a plugin-architecture. There has been a ALSA-plugin available for some time now. The reasons that it has not been included in the official distribution yet is as far as I know:
    1. The ALSA-plugin has been a bit buggy. (I have not tested the latest version though)
    2. The ALSA API has changed recently.

    If you want this plugin you can check: http://server.bohemians.org/~iznogood/ [bohemians.org]

    This used to be linked from the old x11amp-homepage.
  • GQmpeg is nice, although it does have some issues with the frontend-to-mpg123 interface; namely, you start to hear MP3's about a half-second after they begin, and sometimes the buttons go dead for whatever odd reason. X11Amp didn't have at least the first problem when I tried it, IIRC . . .

    Another one to mention is FreeAmp [freeamp.org]. It's also GPL'ed (sponsored by GoodNoise even), and has its own built-in decoder engine. A few ppl here mentioned Nitrane-- well, check this puppy out. It has a superhyperoptimized 128Kbps decoder: whereas mpg123 uses ~8-9% of my K6-2 300, freeamp uses just 0.1% (assuming top ain't lying). It should be even better now, now that NASM 0.98's been released . . .
  • I believe some of the MP3 decoders use various threading techniques that fool top. I remember hearing about this when x11amp was first GPLed - Apparently one of the first things to change was that x11amp began reporting CPU usage correctly. Although I think this has ended... x11amp fools top again.
  • Bill Gates owns ~1 billion shares of Microsoft, each worth ~$80 at last look. There's certainly more shares out there, but let's use that as an estimate. We would need to buy at least 500 million of Bill's shares (assuming he would sell, a big assumption), so the cost would be ~$40 billion. Assuming there are about 10 million Linux users, that's $4,000 apiece MINIMUM.

    I think we could make Linux super-easy to install, self-updating, with consistent interfaces and support for just about every piece of non-Microsoft hardware in the world for rather less than that.
  • Doesn't it rely on mpg123? Unless something's
    changed recently, mpg123 is not free software.
    In particular, you're not allowed to redistribute
    changes you make.
  • In the listing of features from Winamp 2.23 (latest ver.)

    Nitrane 1.60 MPEG audio decoder with MMX and 3DNow! acceleration

    Nope. You might be thinking of encoders - Many people consider the Fraunhofer encoder to have the best quality for 160kbps compression. Many people also don't give a damn and use another encoder because they hate Fraunhofer. (The 160k figure comes from the BladeEnc page, I think - the author of BladeEnce optimizes for higher bitrates, and states that the quality crossover occurs around ~160k.
  • I paid them... It doesn't work. Next?
  • Yes! Lets make xmms have even more useless shit than emacs, and we'll make a whole xmmsOS with its own kernel and give mp3 decoding a much higher priority.
  • where can I find out about this SHN?

  • *SUGGESTION* *SUGGESTION* (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Something that the ALSA project could help to coordinate, along with some other projects (cough --cough --GNOME --KDE --cough)

    We really need to get the Multimedia cores from ESD, ALSA, GNOME, KDE, WindowMaker etc. unified into a single, efficient multimedia core, that would be standard across Linux multimedia apps (and could be ported, at API level, to the *BSD's, 'Doze, BeOS and other NIX's)

    cough: bad option '--cough'
    options:
    --loudly
    --annoyingly

  • Could the percentage still be a lie if you sum up the usage of all the threads and it still is under a percent? I saw one player like this, mp3blaster, but as of late it has a few bugs on my system
  • No one said that OSS is dead. OSS/Lite, however, will go away.

    And ALSA is backwards compatible with OSS. It is also completely GPL'ed and being developed with support from SUSE (It WILL be in SUSE).

    Unfortunately, OSS is a dead end, designwise. No API, no real good programming documentation, lots of stuff under NDA and binary only distribtion. Very simple sequencer implementation, which works for only a few sound cards. Simple PCM implementation, which does not allow for hardware mixing. Fairly simple mixer interface that does not easily allow for newer soundcard features.

    OSS needs a major overhaul to become up to the level of where current technology is. Thet would require creating new devices and ways of doing things, while maintaining backwards compatibility.

    Which is what ALSA is doing. I haven't seen anything at 4Front that indicates that OSS is being expanded.

    Now, on the other hand, ALSA is Linux only. OSS is multiplatform: Solaris, BSD, SCO, etc. That may actually be where OSS's future is.

    jf
  • | How come nobody seems to know about this great
    | MP3 player?

    This is a nice interface - I've bveen using it for a while on my Multia (166 MHz Alpha) to play mp3s, since it was the only GUI interface to a player I could fine that would actually play MP3s at full quality without skipping on my Multia.
    (Multias may be alphas, but thay're *slow* Alphas!)

    Anyway, it's not a *player* per se - but a GUI frontend to mpg123. The author's SRPMs were a bit dodgy, but overall it's a nice interface.
    Did have one problem with the latest version I tried - the Windowmaker docking support didn't work too well: The player somehow created an "icon" that wouldn't go into the dock and couldn't even be moved with the mouse. Otherwise, I'd have it running all the time. ;)
  • GQmpeg actually does look rather nice. It looks motivating enough for me to perhaps customize a skin as well.

    I will note something in favor of X11Amp, though. I was converting a person a couple of weeks ago to linux. He was going to linux from windows because he liked how I made X look, he was very much into aesthetics, and he figured he would do well to know unix.

    His only requirements was the ability to listen to MP3s - its predominantly what he does at home without his .edu bandwidth. After installing the system though, we discovered that his (sizeable) mp3 collection was mostly corrupted - the kind of thing when downloading from http with a misconfig'd webserver. mpg123 would give him the clicks and underwater sounds. He had never noticed these things under windows/winamp.

    Apparently winamp does on the fly repairing.

    So does X11amp, which made him, and me, happy. Because CQmpeg relies on mpg123, that's something which is apparently significant which it lacks.
  • With yesterdays ALSA post, it now seems like OSS free isn't dead and not without support. So if ALSA is going to win any distribution space it is going to have to earn it. Still it would be nice if these guys could work together.

    Don't worry about ALSA. It will be the sound architecture in 2.3 and later kernels. OSS modules will still work of course, but if ALSA has support for your card, you want to run it. It's vastly superior.

    Furthermore, the notion that 4Front is going to make XMMS use special OSS extensions is ridiculous. Have any of you ever looked at the OSS API? It's remarkably simple and going nowhere. Don't expect OSS to support >2 channel sound output or hardware processing (such as 3D) anytime soon. The ALSA interface is currently being designed to allow these things in the future. And right now, it already emulates most (if not all) of the OSS API.

    4Front might have a future writing and selling proprietary ALSA modules (as well as OSS for other unices), but OSS on Linux isn't going to be around much past Linux 2.4.
  • Of course, when free software realizes its full potential, expect MSFT to be quite a bit cheaper!
  • Nuts. I tried to install this version, but it requires versions of gtk+ and glib that are newer than RedHat 6 -- no biggie, go to the GNOME site and -- whoah, they're not there either.

    I am really bugged by the fact that GNOME stuff seems to proliferate so irregularly. Where is everybody else going to get all this up-to-date software that I can never find?

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