DualPlayer plays many kinds of music files. There are player for music modules, SID files, MPEG audio files, Sample- player and MIDI files. New replayer can be easily added.
Music modules
They represents files with integrated samples, a playing sequence and some effect commands. They are made using 'Trackers' (Has nothing to do with the BeOS Tracker ;-). The possibility to use 8bit and 16bit samples allows not only to create so called chip-tunes with less than 40KB, but also full featured songs which can compete with studio mixed songs.This type of computer music first appeared on the Amiga. The Amiga had 4 channels with 8 bits. The main advantage of his sound system was, that the hardware could play samples with free rates from 4000Hz to 28Khz (56Khz for AGA), so you didn't have to calculate different notes for every sample, which was simply not possible on a 8Mhz system. The result was a simple program called SoundTracker which offered 4 simple lists where you could enter your notes in a sequence. Most of the actual Trackers are derived from this system and the formats looks quite equal. DualPlayer recognizes most of the newer formats. The most famous formats in these days are the FastTrackerII and ImpulseTracker formats. These Tracker are only available for DOS machines.
There is a big scene around those modules. Most good modules are released at the big parties in Europe like 'The Assembly', 'The Gathering', 'The Party' and 'The Symposium/Mekka'. They are often part of demos.
Modules are also often used in games. Since the creation is easy, cheap and custom samples can be used, more and more PC games use them. MIDI simply has not the power for real modern songs.
SID
Who can remember those good old times of the Commodore64? He had a good synthesizer, the SID 6581. The results you could get from this chip were incredible and are incredible (There are still some SID musicians in Europe!). Since the files are very small (3 to 5 KB unpacked) this format could be interesting for the Internet. The C64 emulator 'Frodo' can be used to create SIDs, he uses the same SID emulation.
Playing SID is not as easy as you may think. The replayer is a full featured C64 emulator (based on Frodo), but without the VIC (gfx chip) part. Christian Bauer has done a great job on making this replayer as compatible and original as possible.
MPEG audio files
Most files which are available now, are in MPEG layer3 format. MPEG is the kind of format for music, which JPEG is for the world of pictures. Very good quality, good compression rates and fixed transfer rates (selectable between 4 and 56 KB/sec) are some advantages.
MPEG layer3 was developed by the Frauenhofer Institute and is best suited for Internet and digital radio/television since its stream based and not file based. Basically a MPEG stream can be handled like normal audio data. Unlike RealAudio or other modern audio compression technologies, the encoder is freely available and free file based decoding software can obtained for nearly every platform, POSIX sources are also available. AFAIK all decoders want complete files, although a stream based playing, f.ex. through a internet connection is easily possible.
The reason could be the main disadvantage of this technology: slow encoding (It can take 8 hours to encode 10 minutes of audio data), but some low end hardware projects are in works to enable real-time encoding. Looking at the used algorithms reveals, that a multiprocessor PowerPC computer would be a good candidate to develop realtime software encoding. The decoding is actually much faster on PPCs than on other common processors because of the advanced floating point capabilities and the nature of the MPEG algorithms.
The MPEG layer2 format was developed especially for low transfers rates between 1Kb - 32Kb/sec. It is best suited for communication purposes or for archiving audio data, you can archive up to 170 hours on a single CD, that's a whole week!
Although its illegal, there are many song rips from well known CDs available on Internet as mpeg layer3 files. Additionally more and more new and/or independent groups release mpeg files to the public, it could become a replacement for demo tapes.
DualPlayer includes one on the fastest MPEG player. Here is a picture to prove it: (note that it was done on a Dual66 603 machine without L2 cache, and no, he is not in pausing mode ;-)
Sampleplayer
DualPlayer plays some standard Sampleformat, like RAW, AIFF WAV etc. e.g. everything which is supported directly by the BeOS. These formats are the enemy of your harddisk space...
MIDI
This is the standard format for musicians and music on the net. Since only notes are saved in this format, you need good instruments banks to get good replay quality. I personally don't like MIDI, since the music normally sounds horrible, with the exception of some game music's.
| DualPlayer created mime types, but there are no icons. How do I get icons? | I really don't know the reason, but you could try to delete the mime types psid, mpeg, it, xm and s3m from /boot/system/settings/mime/audio. Then restart your computer and launch DualPlayer. |
| Why does the CD-player part not work? | The CD-player tries to find a CD-ROM at the SCSI-ID 0. To change this edit the CDDevice in the preferences window or when you have a non registered version the file 'Preferences/MainPrefs'. |
| Why doesn't DualPlayer recognize sample files? | Because the file type is checked first. You can either set the file type manually or turn off the file type checking in the sample player settings. Dualplayer also recognizes some standard extenstions: '.raw','.wav','.aiff' etc. NOTE: I could not check the functionality of the sample player in this version, so some formats will probably not work! |
| Why does DualPlayer not start when I double click an icon of a file? | You have surely moved DualPlayer out of /boot/apps. The Tracker can only launch applications which are in /boot/apps. I hope these problems will be fixed in the preview release. |
| Why does DualPlayer not recognize some modules which worked with BeMikMod? | Most of the time such modules are in the Mod15 format. These modules dont have any signature in them, so its hard to recognize them. Append a '.mod' to the filename or a 'mod.' and the beginning of the filename and retry it. In 80% of all cases this should work. |
| I am clicking on the small '>' to forward the fast buttons, but nothing happens. | Click on the '>' and HOLD the mouse button. While HOLDING, move the mouse left and right to scroll through the entries. |
| Why does the MIDI player not work? | The supplied MIDI player needs a whole instrument bank, the one of the BeOS is not supported. You can either use the GUS or MIDIA patches, the MIDIA patches can be obtained freely on the net. The GUS patches offer the best quality and sound better than the BeOS midi patches. Additionally you need to edit the file 'Preferences/MidiPrefs' where the used patches and the directory containing the patches must be selected. For other options look in the TiMidity documentation. |
When quitting and launching the last window positions are saved. This
affects ALL windows in DualPlayer. I you can't see the main panel, the
window settings were surely set to high for your actual screen size. Delete
or change 'Preferences/MainPrefs' in this case.
Using the position slider you can forward to a specific position. They are a replacement for the seeking button which can be normally found on normal cd players. If the position in the file cannot be displayed a 'n.a.' (not available) will be displayed. This affects f.ex. PSid files, where a correct position cannot be determined. A note for the volume selector: Be careful when using volumes over 100%, the result could noisy, which sounds like if you had a too high volume level at recording on a tape or speaking in a microphone. You can use the level scope to adjust the output level, just like on a real tape.
Pressing the 'CD-Mode' turns DualPlayer into a player to play real CDs. In this mode, DualPlayer won't accept any files anymore until you return in normal mode by repressing the 'CD-Mode' button. If the CD-player does not work, you surely forgot to set the right device for the CD-Rom drive, refer to the preferecenes file section to adjust this.
When they are no entries in the playlist, a file requester will be opened
when pressing the play button else he will play the highlighted or the
first entry in the playlist.
Press 'Prefs' for the Preferences window. Note that every player and
postprocessor has its own settings. You can switch them by selecting the
items. You can activate and disactivate entries by double-clicking the
items.
| General | ||
| P, ENTER | Pause/Play. Works like the similar button. | |
| ESCAPE, S | Stop playing. Works like the stop button. | |
| Left Arrow | Play previous file in playlist or open file requester. | |
| Right Arrow | Play next file in playlist or open file requester. | |
| F1-F12 | Access to fastbuttons 1-12 | |
| Playlist | ||
| Up/Down Arrow | Move Cursor in playlist | |
| BACKSPACE, DELETE | Remove entries | |
You can find modules on these sites:ftp://ftp.luth.se/pub/msdos/demos/music/songs/Its a mirror of ftp.cdrom.com. I think this is the best resource for modules, since its sorted quite good. Look at the index files!ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/aminet/mods/or any other Aminet site. Many trash there, but you'll perhaps find some nice modules.ftp://frodo.hiof.noThis site is specialized on C64 files. The Nemesis collection contains most of the known SID files. There should be somewhere in pub/c64/sids/, I cant remember the right directory...http://ftpsearch.unit.no/ftpsearchThis is a file searcher. If you like to find mpeg files, midia patches, wav files or something else use this engine, its the best! To search f.ex. mpeg files enter '.mp3' in the search form and preferably add a domain where to search. Note, that its quite tricky to use this engine, but after some tries, you will be able to find almost everything which is available through ftp.
To register use this sheet: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Registration for DualPlayer V1.xx | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Send this sheet to: | | | | 5uro@informatik.uni-hamburg.de | | | | Or send a snail mail to: | | | | T.Uro & M.Schmoecker GBR | | Bellerbek 6 | | 22559 Hamburg | | | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Personal information (will be placed in the key file): | | | | | | Name/Company ___________________________________________ | | | | | | Address ___________________________________________ | | | | | | City ___________________________________________ | | | | | | ZIP ___________________________________________ | | | | | | Country ___________________________________________ | | | | | | EMail ___________________________________________ | | | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Currency: | | | | [ ] 15 $ (US Dollar) | | [ ] 70 FF (Francs francais) | | [ ] 20 DM (Deutsche Mark) | | [ ] other european currency, read notes below | | | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Payment method: | | | | [ ] cash via snail mail (on your own risk!) | | [ ] cheque, read notes below | | [ ] bank transfer, read notes below | | | | Cash and checks should go to: | | | | T.Uro & M.Schmoecker GBR | | Bellerbek 6 | | 22559 Hamburg | | | | Bank transfers should go to this german account: | | | | Account possessor: Tinic Uro | | Account number / Kto.Nr.: 706 741 6 | | Bank name: Deutsche Bank Hamburg | | Bank code / BLZ: 200 500 00 | | | | A french account will be added soon. | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+The key file
DualPlayer is copyrighted by Tinic Uro in 1997.Anyone using this program agrees to incur the risk of using it for himself. In no way can the author be held responsible for any damage directly or indirectly caused by the use or misuse of this manual and/or the program.
DualPlayer is not designed, intended, or authorized for use as a component in systems intended for surgical implant within the body, or other applications intended to support or sustain life, or for any other application in which the failure of DualPlayer could create a situation where personal injury or death may occur.
A key file may be only installed on a single computer and must not be modified or distributed. Multiple licenses can be obtained from the author with special conditions. Key files remains in the possession of the author; he gards his right to disable them or forcing the user the user to remove/delete it from any media, when the user broke any rules of this license.
DualPlayer may be only distributed when all parts of the archive remain unchanged and without any key file.
DualPlayer V1.0+ plays these formats:
PlaySID files V1.0-2.0 1-4 channels 16bit MIDI files 1-64 channels 16bit MPEG layer2 and layer3 1-2 channels 16bit UNiX,WAVE,AIFF,RAWM files 1-2 channels 8bit,16bit SoundTracker 4 channels 8bit ProTracker 4 channels 8bit StarTracker 4 channels 8bit FastTracker 4,6,8 channels 8bit Oktalyser 8 channels 8bit TakeTracker 16,32 channels 8bit ScreamTracker 2.0 4 channels 8bit ScreamTracker 3.0 1-32 channels 8bit,16bit FastTracker 2.0 1-32 channels 8bit,16bit UltraTracker V1.3-V1.6 1-32 channels 8bit,16bit MTM 1-32 channels 8bit,16bit ImpulseTracker Vx.xx 1-64 channels 8bit,16bit
NOTE: Some effects could not work as expected and some files rarely do not work correctly, when they use undocumented features or formats.Some misc. features:
- Plays files with 44100Hz
- Can freely mix the right and left channel together especially to hear 4 channels modules.
- You can boost the volume
- PlayList
- Nice scopes.
- ModuleInfo to see the sample names and comments in the module
- Play position freely selectable.
- Post processors
- can be controlled from other applications.
- I know that some modules crash. I'll wait until I get the official updates of MikMod. Patience!
- the Samples Player was only tested with file type checking off and raw samples, so other formats will probably not work... Sorry...
- File types
more exotic file formats. I you know any sources for players, let me know! more config stuff for the players. And not to forget: Ill try to remove BUGs!!!
