The current crop of CL cards are alright.  Just don't buy into the bs they throw at you on the back of the box.  They poor on the MarketSpeak® rather heavily :\.

Also, make sure you remove all the bs that gets installed to auto-start at boot..both in the registry and in services (assuming you're running 2K/XP).  Those stupid progs can cause problems and usually just eat resources.

Creative labs makes decent hardware, but their software has always sucked.

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I'm running at 2048x1536 and ALL of the skins are WAY too small.  They're useable, but a pain in the ass.  The only one thats about right is the 'Default 1.5x' skin, which is what I use.  Snatch would work, but it takes up more desktop real estate than default@1.5 yet the fonts are smaller.   Too bad too, I like the Blue series skins otherwise.  Maybe there should be a feature that dynamically scales the skin/app window size?  There would be a 1x, 1.5x and 2x size setting.  Just a thought.

Off topic, but I would also like to see a 30hz and 20khz slider added to the EQ, as well as a guassian and/or an MP-style High quality (8point tap?) filter.  I still think this is needed.  Also, an No-filter option would be nice for those older mods that sound too muddy, even with linear interpolation.

Awesome..

Just to clear it up, when I said this:
I meant a non-interpolated option will be in the next release

How about a guassian/8point tap?

That's what I said.  Snatch looks about right on my 2048x1536 desktop in terms of overall screen size, but then why are the fonts and displays smaller than the one found on the default 1.5x skin?

The other skins (except default 1.5) are all WAAY too small.  I didn't buy a 21" monitor to run at 800x600...  Its too bad xmplay doesn't support a standard win32 GUI so it looks and works consistently with the rest of the system.  That's my overall preference since it'll scale with the screen resolution like any other program.

Don't let the skins stand in the way of progress...

I agree!  There are a lot of players out there that have this "skins above all else" development mentality.  As neat as a few of the (xmplay) skins look, the most functional one (for me) is the default 1.5.  The rest are either too small, or in the case of snatch, take a lot of desktop real estate, yet the info areas are no bigger than the rest.

Just my $.02

Been asked for, along with a gaussian and/or 8 point tap filter as well.  I guess we'll see if either makes it in.

Looks real good.  I would like to see it mimic the current windows colorscheme though.  I know, I know this requires a program change...

While I could see having such a feature if a particular module format used 24 bit samples and was capable of polyphonic 'instrument' voices, but for the supported formats I see it being overkill.  I think 24/32 bits at 96khz is quite sufficient.  Do you REALLY need 24 bit 192khz to play back a 4 channel, non polyphonic module that uses 8 bit samples?  Even the IT and XM formats that use 16 bit samples at best, sound quite good with the bandwidth 24 bits provides.  

From a performance standpoint, mixing at 24 bit/192khz sampling would bring almost any modern machine to its knees on the more complicated module formats.  Try playing back XeeGee-DreamShifter[remix].it at 24 bit 96khz.  It takes about 50-80% of my cpu during the busy parts on my p3 ~1ghz machine at 24 bit 48khz.  At 96khz, xmplay underruns its buffer so it it it t ..soun ound und nd ds...li lie ekk kk this isis ss......

Also, for the record, there is NO POINT in resampling the output of the 'lossy' stream formats like ogg/mp3.  It is best to play them back at their recorded rates.  Any resampling can actually reduce quality and waste CPU cycles.

Finally, I doubt you'd notice the difference between 96khz sampling, and 192khz sampling.  Most people can't even tell on good equipment, nevermind a shitty ~$150 set of computer speakers or set of headphones.

Anyway just my $.02

* 8 point windowed sinc interpolation (3DNow! optimized)

Awesome .  1 quick question.  How will the new mixer run on intel hardware?  Will it fall back to MMX, use x87 instructions, or use SSE/SSE2?

I've been playing around with the beta and noticed a few things.

That 8 point sinc mixer in general sounds really good .  One thing I noticed, though, was that in some circumstances, samples sounded a little more rough than the linear mixer (these 'problem' samples sounded like they weren't filtered as much).  Another thing (which is my problem I guess) is that its too slow to play back some of the more intense .it files in my collection.  While I don't expect miracles, it would be cool to have the cubic spline mixer back as an alternate as well .  I'm not sure if using SSE instructions would help much, but they might.  Btw, I have a p3-850@977Mhz.  Having the no-filter option is great as a lot of those older files don't sound like they're being played under water .

Anyway keep up the good work.

Btw, check out Jizz -Smokeout.xm by TBL (on the ftp)...Listen to the beginning part with the sinc interpolation and then listen with the old cubic spline interpolator from 2.6.  That whistling/squealing noise is what I was talking about in my other post.  Other modules are affected too.  I listened to those two ogg samples and it 'sounds' like we're talking about the same thing, but I'm not sure.

Sorry I just don't have the technical knowledge to be able to use the right terms to describe what I'm hearing. I end up sounding like an idiot.  You two are way beyond me on this stuff.  I understand linear and cubic a little, but thats as far as I go.  I only made sense of about 10% of those links :\.

Not looking to have it removed.  That's counter-productive. I just think the focus of the project should be on modules, while things like stream formats should be considered extras.  In any event, its Ian's project.  He can do whatever he wants.  This is just how I would like to see it progress.

Ian,
hehe ok.  That's good.  I guess I got the wrong impression from reading some of your other posts.


Kynes,

Well, I believe that there needs to be a balance of features vs simplicity.  If you have too many features, you alienate users, and if you have too few, you alienate as well.  I'm fairly happy with the featureset of xmplay, but I still think there's room for improvement (that's a good thing btw).

While there may be people out there who are 'less qualified' users, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be stretched a bit now and then.  We can't just dumb everything down to their level all the time.  Its not like they'll be confused by two extra sliders on the EQ, or a few extra resample settings.  Its not like the player won't work if you don't understand what they are.  That's what default settings are for .

Dirk,
No, I'm not.  I wish I was a good enough coder to write something like that, though.  The closest I get is playing around with the q2 source, haha.

Hyperdrive,
Cool to see you share my views .  While relative binary size doesn't mean much to me (except in those cool demoscene contests), I do appreciate fast, well-written code.

BoggyB,

While supporting additional stream formats sounds nice, it kind of pollutes the purpose of the player.  As it is, I still have to use modplug (or the original tracker software) for some formats because xmplay doesn't support them.  In XMplay, I think this should take priority over stream formats.  Let those be supported by plugins as you say.  But the core ideology of the player should be built-in as much as possible .  In the case of XMplay, that would be modules (right?).  Again, just my opinion.

Whoa, wait a minute...why do people want all of these features?  They're already in other players.  I don't want to see a bloated xmplay that plays videos and flashes lights all over the screen. Why? just about EVERY other player out there supports these 'features' (and they all use the same video codecs, so you can't tell me one is better than the other quality wise).  In terms of mp3/ogg/lossy compressed audio/video, 95% of the playback quality is determined by the ENcoder, not the decoder.  Any differences between winamp and xmplay you hear I'm willing to bet are in your head, your drivers, or in your program settings.

I thought xmplay was supposed to be THE module player for windows...After all, that's where it really excels.  Leave the video/mp3 stuff for other players.  All those other players are just shells for the existing codecs anyway.  Do we really need to make xmplay yet another shell?  Also, if you want to use winamp plugins, just use winamp.  Xmplay or anything else won't sound any different or offer any other functionality.  I don't see what the big deal is with having both on the hd.  They're less than a MB each..

I would like to see an expansion of supported module formats, like .669, .nst, .mdl, .okt (and others) , before seeing things like video playback, pretty skins or screensavers.  After all, MOD files are what xmplay is about right?  How about at least prelim support for sk@le tracker, MT2(with .mtx exts?) and Renoise?  I realize those are difficult formats to implement and it would take awhile, but I'd rather see efforts go in that direction than towards features that already exist in every other player out there.

Ian, I see you're defending the skins a lot when some feature like a bigger EQ with more bands, or extra interpolation settings (both good ideas IMHO!), would require a change.  Think about it, do you really want to hinder development of xmplay because of a skin?  Is that the most important thing about xmplay?  I don't know, but skins are pretty much at the bottom of my list.  I use it because its got the best module playback routine on windows that I can find anywhere.  I know, I know, its your project, but I think I've got a point here .  Anyway, just my $.02

Btw, on the EQ, I'd like to see a 31hz and 20khz slider added.  I really think that's all it needs .

This has nothing to do with playback/mixing

Oops maybe I should read into the topic a little more.  I just assumed he was talking about mixing issues..  Sorry.  Thanks for the clarification.

Whatever mixing mode you use should not be tailored to any specific file, otherwise, its no good :\.  It should sound consistent on all files.  I realize that file I uploaded to you wasn't really that great music wise.  However, it did blatantly point out the issue I was having with the old sinc mixer .  It was also not the only file I had the issue with.

Anyway the new mixer seems a lot better than the old one but I still do hear some whistling from time to time.  Also, I thought you'd leave the cubic spline method in there as well.  Well anyway, gj on the release

um..sorry?  I was trying to be a little funny about it.  I'm not angry at all..hahaha