Any generic (non-wm-specific) audio players?

[Garrett Cooper]

Gary Kline wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 11:46:52AM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>   
>> Gary Kline wrote:
>>     
>>> 	Another thing I've been wondering about is xmms-faad2
>>> 	which is mp4 or a High Effiency decoder of "aac"(?)
>>> 	streams that only require 24kpbs to yeild fairly high
>>> 	fidelity sound.  Does anybody know anything about how
>>> 	xmms-faad2 works with good ol' xmms??  (I'm completely
>>> 	new to most of this--streaming sites.  But then just got
>>> 	new speakers w/bass boombox!)  So any tips will be very
>>> 	welcome.
>>>
>>> 	gary
>>>       
>>    The faad2 item should just be a plugin for xmms. It's kind of 
>> convoluted how they compile stuff with the faad2 lib, but basically-in 
>> Linux at least-it downloads the complete faad2 source, compiles it 
>> first, then compiles the plugin from a different branch from the main 
>> source in the source tree.
>>     
>
> 	I don't quite understand.  Many weeks ago sky.fm had an 
> 	AAC stream for its "Mostly Classical" stream and I tried
> 	xxmms-faad to play the sky.fm AAC dtream.  ZIP.  After a 
> 	fewhours I kicked the cat and hit the wall and gave up.
> 	I've looked around for other HE encoding with AAC, no-joy.
> 	...
>
>   
Hmmm... I've never really tried FAAD2 stuff with FreeBSD though... I 
sort of limit my FreeBSD use to daemons and such and use my Linux box 
for all my desktop playing around :).

faad2 by itself only decodes the file into PCM I believe... it doesn't 
output to any specific sound devices (ie /dev/dsp, etc).

Sad thing too is that I think that the faad2 project was abandoned last 
year, maybe... (at least it seems that way since there hasn't been any 
active development on the project since either April or June of last 
year IIRC, based on their last CVS snapshot >_>...).
>>    I was doing a bit of reading too (trying to see if I can just change 
>> the source a bit to get ID3/iTunes tags to be read in xmms), and it 
>> turns out that iTunes uses MP4 format with AAC encoding, as opposed to 
>> AAC which uses MP2 encoding as a base.
>>     
>
> 	I know virtually Zero about this other than the theory;
> 	unfortunately, here theory is useless.  I poked around at 
> 	web sites and FAQ's:: nothing gave me any *practical*]
> 	advise.  xmms is beyond Neat, but exactly how does xmms-faad2
> 	PLUGIN???  I grep's the /work/* xmms code for pluggin, nothing.
> 	<&c ** 2>  [[ Interesting tidbit about Apple, BTW.]
>   
Here; this is what I meant when I said what I said earlier ;):

#faad2 source:
shiina:~/Documents/faad_revision gcooper$ ls -l faad2/plugins/xmms/src/
total 56
-rwxr-xr-x   1 gcooper  gcooper    423 Jun 20 22:12 Makefile.am
-rwxr-xr-x   1 gcooper  gcooper   2714 Jun 20 22:12 aac_utils.c
-rwxr-xr-x   1 gcooper  gcooper  13332 Jun 20 22:12 libmp4.c
-rwxr-xr-x   1 gcooper  gcooper   2567 Jun 20 22:12 mp4_utils.c
drwxrwxrwx   4 gcooper  gcooper    136 Jun 20 22:12 old
shiina:~/Documents/faad_revision gcooper$

#xmms source:
shiina:~/Documents/faad_revision gcooper$ ls -l xmms-1.2.10/Input/
total 72
-rwxr-xr-x    1 gcooper  gcooper  15259 Jun 20 22:14 Makefile
-rwxr-xr-x    1 gcooper  gcooper     82 Jun 20 22:14 Makefile.am
-rwxr-xr-x    1 gcooper  gcooper  15508 Jun 20 22:14 Makefile.in
drwxrwxrwx   27 gcooper  gcooper    918 Jun 20 22:14 cdaudio
drwxrwxrwx   11 gcooper  gcooper    374 Jun 20 22:14 mikmod
drwxrwxrwx   91 gcooper  gcooper   3094 Jun 20 22:14 mpg123
drwxrwxrwx   11 gcooper  gcooper    374 Jun 20 22:14 tonegen
drwxrwxrwx   15 gcooper  gcooper    510 Jun 20 22:14 vorbis
drwxrwxrwx   12 gcooper  gcooper    408 Jun 20 22:14 wav
shiina:~/Documents/faad_revision gcooper$

So what I think happens is that it downloads the faad2 source, untars 
it, then compiles with preexisting headers for xmms on the system, and 
installs the compiled version of the plugin on the system (wherever the 
plugins go.. not sure again since I use Linux for this stuff by default).

As for the Apple work, it is interesting because I've been playing 
around with iTunes a bit and it appears that I *could* reverse engineer 
a lot of the fields (there's no way I'm paying Apple for licensing fees 
:P), and then either code some stuff or set someone else up with the 
information for them to code. I need another file made by a proprietary 
encoder just to make things more constant and ensure that Apple isn't 
just doing their own thing as opposed to following some sort of set 
standard.
>   
>>    Doesn't really matter all that much I suppose, but I was just 
>> looking through the source trying to figure stuff out and the original 
>> author's nomenclature is just a bit confusing.
>> -Garrett
>>     
>
> 	Good to know I'm not the only one.  I realize we/FBSD have a 
> 	rather small bunch, but there are some brilliant people on-list.
> 	Maybe some thoughtful person can clue me in....
>
> 	gary
>   
-Garrett