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[saga]

Why is the RAR plugin slower than ZIP?  Much more complex?

That depends mostly on the compression you've used in the archive. If you use no compression on both, the speed difference should be negligible.

More importantly, it depends on solid compression, which is not supported by the ZIP format, but often used (for very good reasons, especially in the context of compressing many modules / sound files from a game in one file) in RAR archives. The big problem with solid archives is random access: If you want to read file #99 in a solid RAR file, you also need to uncompress files 1 through 98 as well.

[SmartOne]

In that case, could archives of separately compressed files (all ZIPs, cases of others) be passed to the Input plugin like a folder to obtain the shared-file functionality?

[Pike84]

Why is the RAR plugin slower than ZIP?  Much more complex?

In my experience, RAR archives have always been painfully slow compared to the alternatives (ZIP, 7-ZIP). I'm not surprised that RARs are even slow in XMPlay.

[Knurek]

Ian, would it be possible to have an option to modify handling of natively supported filetypes (WAV, MP3, OGG) to skip using XMPlay's replay engine for files with a different extension than the usual?

I'm asking since there are a lot of video game music files that use either of those with custom loop markers inserted somewhere in the file, and while VGMStream plugin handles them just peachy, XMPlay steals the files from it, meaning no loops for all sorts of LWAV, LOGG, LMP3, MSF and other filetypes.

I think I asked for something similar some time ago, but it's been nagging me more and more with each set I need to play in Winamp just to have the songs not cut abruptly at loop points.

[SmartOne]

(I was hoping you'd make that suggestion.) 

[Zarggg]

IIRC, it uses file headers to determine type, NOT extensions.

[Knurek]

IIRC, it uses file headers to determine type, NOT extensions.

That's exactly my point - I would like an option for using *extensions* for determining playback capability, and *NOT* the file headers.

[Zarggg]

Ah, but file extensions can be wrong.

[Knurek]

Ah, but file extensions can be wrong.

That's why I said optional

Let me give you a clearer example:

Final Fantasy XIII for Playstation 3 uses an MP3 variant for it's music files with .SCD extension. It's still an MPEG Layer 3 file, and gets detected as such by XMPlay, but this has a side effect of the files being played without proper looping. VGMStream plugin can read the additional looping info from the custom header the SCD files have, and while this works in WinAMP just fine, XMPlay detects the files as being plain MP3s and doesn't let VGMStream parse them at all.
With an option of treating only files with MP3 extension as MP3s you'd have the best of both worlds, since proper MP3s would be played by XMPlay and non-standard ones (VGMStream supports many types of those) would be played with proper looping support.

And no, forcing the loops in XMPlay's config panel doesn't work here, since that's only front to back looping, and most game music has at least a few seconds intro that gets skipped on the second loop.

[oddiophile]

More feature requests:

- Swap left and right channels (inverse stereo output) - useful for listening to live recordings and correction of recordings with swapped L and R channels.

- Downmix to mono (mono output) - for accessibility and encoding

Both features are available in Winamp and Foobar2000.

[raina]

Options > Output > Channels: mono?

Both features are available in Winamp and Foobar2000.

Not that I have anything against a simple feature like L/R swapping (via keyboard shortcut for example) but haven't you been in here long enough to know THAT argument is only good for stirring the community?

[Chinese Sausage]

More feature requests:

- Swap left and right channels (inverse stereo output) - useful for listening to live recordings and correction of recordings with swapped L and R channels.

- Downmix to mono (mono output) - for accessibility and encoding

Both features are available in Winamp and Foobar2000.

Well, they exist as separate Winamp DSP plugins. Here they are attached in case you are interested in them and/or do not have them!

Cheers!

[Pike84]

Mono output has been in-built for as long as I remember (Options & stuff -> Output -> Channels).

[amit]

Is it possible to add rating field to title formatting?

[Chinese Sausage]

Mono output has been in-built for as long as I remember (Options & stuff -> Output -> Channels).

Yes but it does not seem to work in mono, at least with my current software. But the above attached plugins do the job flawlessly

[Pike84]

I guess there's a problem with it then... I haven't noticed since I use stereo output, like most people I'm sure

[oddiophile]

Mono output doesn't work here (using WASAPI *shared* output)

Winamp plugins are nice, but they work only in 16-bit mode.

[Ian @ un4seen]

All archive plugins:

Make contained files visible to the Input plugin as if the archive were a folder. This way shared, soundbank-type files are available to make the separate tracks playable in the archive.  This already works with MINIPSF/MINIPSF2 and PSFLIB/PSF2LIB files.  It does not work with MINIGSF and GSFLIB files, for example.

Archive contents are visible to native plugins (eg. the MIDI plugin can load an SF2 soundfont from within the same archive as a MIDI file), but unfortunately that isn't possible with Winamp plugins. It could be achieved by extracting all of the files to disk, but that would be slow and wasteful (there's nothing to say that the other files are wanted).

Ian, would it be possible to have an option to modify handling of natively supported filetypes (WAV, MP3, OGG) to skip using XMPlay's replay engine for files with a different extension than the usual?

Here's something to try...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

Rather than a "skip" option, each plugin has its own "priority filetypes" list. If any plugin has a file's extension in its list, it will get 1st try at the file. If multiple plugins have the extension, they will be tried in the order that they are shown in the "Input" plugins options page. If all priority plugins have been unsuccessful, the usual order of things follows (ie. built-in decoders, then the plugins).

Mono output has been in-built for as long as I remember (Options & stuff -> Output -> Channels).

Yes but it does not seem to work in mono, at least with my current software.

Check that you have also enabled the "Downmix multi-channel" option.

[oddiophile]

It 'works' with the downmix option enabled, but only the left speaker is active.  What I need is monoized output (mono downmix cloned to both speakers, like when playing a mono MP3 file).

[piovrauz]

so it's dual mono yo're talking about, right?