Mpg321

Infobox_Software


caption =
name = mpg321
developer = Joe Drew
latest_release_version = 0.2.10
latest_release_date = March 24, 2002
operating_system = Unix / Linux
genre = Audio Player
license = GPL
website = [http://mpg321.depooter.org/ http://mpg321.depooter.org/]

mpg321 is a Free clone of mpg123, a command-line MP3 player for Linux/Unix/BSD and other *nix style operating systems. It is designed to be a drop-in replacement for mpg123. Its interface has been designed around that of mpg123, without using any of its code. mpg321 has been designed for use with frontends such as gqmpeg, although it is just as useful on the command line. Unlike old versions of mpg123, it supports ESD and ALSA output without recompiling, and it does all MP3 decoding with only fixed-point math by using the mad MPEG audio decoder library.

mpg321 is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

History

An Add-on for FreeAmp

mpg321 was created by Joe Drew in 1999. It was created as a wrapper script for the mpg123 frontend of the media player FreeAmp. It was contributed to the Debian package of FreeAmp, and for several revisions was included as 'mpg123.freeamp.' (This script has since been removed.)

mpg123.freeamp didn't work very well, and was limited by FreeAmp's implementation of the mpg123 frontend, but it worked for what was needed it to do: play music from the command line without needing mpg123 installed.

The Stand-Alone Application

Early in 2001, the project's creator decided that a real alternative to mpg123 was needed. After some exploration, it was determined that the mp3 decoding library SMPEG, written by Loki Software, would be used to make mpg321 a stand-alone application and the first version of mpg321 was born.

SMPEG, required SDL for output, which in turn required many other libraries. Joe believed this to be a sub-optimal arrangement and felt that a change was needed. In 2001, he began a complete rewrite of the application. Instead of SMPEG, the new application was designed around Rob Leslie's MPEG Audio Decoder library (MAD). MAD was chosen because it provides very high-quality output, and also because it operates entirely with fixed point (integer) instructions. At the same time, Joe also switched to the Ogg Vorbis (Xiph.Org Foundation) project libao for all audio output.

Sources

* [http://mpg321.sourceforge.net/ mpg321 homepage (deprecated)]

External links

* [http://mpg321.depooter.org/project/ mpg321 official homepage]
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpg321 mpg321 development at Sourceforge.net]