Best way to play SPCs?

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Ichinisan
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Best way to play SPCs?

Post by Ichinisan »

My 15-year-old nephew is playing the hell out of the Megaman X games and is becoming a fan of game music. I set him up remotely with Winamp Lite (which I haven't used for years) and downloaded / organized a huge selection of SPC files.

Using Google to find the best SPC playback solution is tough. Most people recommend long-defunct tools and the home pages are down. I used some Alpha-II-whatever Winamp plug-in for several days, suspecting that some of the tunes were a bit off...and eventually determined that it was downright butchering some of the music. I listened to some of Tommy Tallarico's stuff from Earthworm Jim and everything was WAY off. To make sure it wasn't a bad SPC dump, I created a ZST myself and played it.

I searched the board here and found references to a "GME" (Game Music Emulator) Winamp plug-in, but the home page for that was down too. I'm hoping the version I downloaded was the latest. I noticed that it can't play my ZST, but that's fine. It seems to work much better than what I was using.

However, because the GME homepage is down, I want to know if there's something better out there. I remember using an app like SNESamp back in the day that was pretty cool, but randomly crashed on most PCs. I believe there are plugins for Foobar2000. What's the best way to experience my SPCs?

Thanks!
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franpa
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Post by franpa »

GME is probably the best approach as it uses Blaargs very accurate core.

http://www.mudlord.info/crap/audio/

You can download the old v1.0 alpha here http://home.exetel.com.au/franpa/in_mgme.dll. NSF track selection is buggy but other then that I haven't noticed anything wrong and it is more accurate then SNESAmp with regards to SPC playback.
Last edited by franpa on Wed Aug 31, 2011 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ichinisan
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Post by Ichinisan »

Thanks.

The version of GME that I already found is "MGME 1.5beta [in_mgme1.5beta.dll]". No real configuration options to speak of. I'd really like it to have a detailed status visualizer...but I'm already pleased with the accuracy compared to that Alpha-II-whatever I had been using.

At least I'm somewhat more assured that I'm not missing out on some better plugin. I'm surprised by how useless Google was in this situation.
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Post by tukuyomi »

if you don't mind using foobar2000, you can get foo_gep, which uses game_music_emu library as well: http://kode54.foobar2000.org/?v

More players that use GME: http://www.slack.net/~ant/libs/audio.ht ... _Music_Emu
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Post by grinvader »

As to displaying info, nothing comes close to super jukebox... but it's using an outdated core.
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Ichinisan
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Post by Ichinisan »

grinvader wrote:As to displaying info, nothing comes close to super jukebox... but it's using an outdated core.
I tried that one a long time ago and loved it, but it crashed constantly for some reason on various systems. The author had said it was "complete" and said there would be no more development.
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Post by paulguy »

Ichinisan wrote:At least I'm somewhat more assured that I'm not missing out on some better plugin. I'm surprised by how useless Google was in this situation.
I'm not too surprised. There's so much confusion and misinformation when it comes to this kind of stuff. Until the past couple years, a lot of people still recommended NESTICLE of all things as the best NES emulator.. hell I even saw a youtube video from maybe only a year or 2 ago that recommended nesticle.
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Post by Ichinisan »

paulguy wrote:
Ichinisan wrote:At least I'm somewhat more assured that I'm not missing out on some better plugin. I'm surprised by how useless Google was in this situation.
I'm not too surprised. There's so much confusion and misinformation when it comes to this kind of stuff. Until the past couple years, a lot of people still recommended NESTICLE of all things as the best NES emulator.. hell I even saw a youtube video from maybe only a year or 2 ago that recommended nesticle.
*shudders
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Post by franpa »

Could you please post a link to the v1.5 dll ? I would appreciate it.
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Post by tukuyomi »

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Post by grinvader »

Ichinisan wrote:
grinvader wrote:As to displaying info, nothing comes close to super jukebox... but it's using an outdated core.
I tried that one a long time ago and loved it, but it crashed constantly for some reason on various systems. The author had said it was "complete" and said there would be no more development.
Bootgod's unofficial version

use it
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Post by franpa »

tukuyomi, thanks.
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Post by tukuyomi »

And there is the official 3.3, which supports RSN.
But too bad, these still use snesapu :/

franpa, you're welcome :)
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Post by kode54 »

I might be bothered to make a SPC visualization for foo_gep. Just as long as it only needs a snapshot of the APU registers every so often, it'll be fine. And it will even be timed against the player DSP/output lag. (Basically, I was thinking a dynamic metadata variable that gets filled with a hex dump of the entire APU register set, so that's 256 characters. Then foobar2000, by design, delays passing this information to user callbacks relative to the DSP and output latency, so you get lag-free display as long as you handle the information and draw your stuff quickly.)
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Post by grinvader »

So you'd make a visualisation panel thingie... well, probably no other way to pull it.
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Post by kode54 »

Yeah, and it would only need one piece of information not in the DSP registers, namely the current envelope state for channels in ADSR mode. While Super Jukebox does use SNESAPU specific mixer status variables for the envelope volume, pitch, and output volume, those could all be replaced by ENVX, pitch registers, and OUTX.

EDIT: And it's done. Check under View -> Visualizations. Or with the Default UI, enter layout editing mode, then check the UI Element list under Visualizations.
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Post by Ichinisan »

kode54 wrote:EDIT: And it's done. Check under View -> Visualizations. Or with the Default UI, enter layout editing mode, then check the UI Element list under Visualizations.
Sweet! I'll have to try it soon.
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Ichinisan
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Post by Ichinisan »

Hey, Kode...where do I download your update?

[edit]
nevermind. It wasn't on the page I found when I google-ed for "foobar2000", but I found it on the page you linked before you announced the update.
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Ichinisan
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Post by Ichinisan »

Kode, the page that's linked in your profile shows that foo_gep was updated yesterday. Anything new?
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Post by kode54 »

I should change that link to this, which links to pages where I keep change logs. I implemented enhanced SCC support for .kss files.
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Re:

Post by Ichinisan »

kode54 wrote:I should change that link to this, which links to pages where I keep change logs. I implemented enhanced SCC support for .kss files.
Ha ha. I Googled this thread again to find Kode's link.
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Re: Best way to play SPCs?

Post by Epy »

Sorry to bump an old thread, but have there been any more advancements on the Winamp front (or anything else SPC-related, for that matter)? I'm using in_mgme 1.5 beta right now and it sounds great compared to Alpha-II's SNESAPU-based plugin.

foobar2000 is a fine player, as is Audacious on Linux, but they both suffer vs. Winamp when adding a huge playlist. Both players feel the need to read-in file information on adding instead of reading it when it appears to the user in the playlist, and so it takes a minute or two to add a huge playlist.
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Re: Best way to play SPCs?

Post by grinvader »

Epy wrote:Audacious on Linux, but they both suffer vs. Winamp when adding a huge playlist. Both players feel the need to read-in file information on adding instead of reading it when it appears to the user in the playlist, and so it takes a minute or two to add a huge playlist.
You can configure Audacious to fit your tastes.
> Preferences > Playlist > Metadata > "Do not load metadata for songs until played"
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Re: Best way to play SPCs?

Post by Epy »

Thanks for the tip. I am running Windows, so that poses an obvious problem, but I don't really use Audacious anymore because I've grown tired of ignored bug reports and feature requests.
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Re: Best way to play SPCs?

Post by kode54 »

foobar2000 should be useful for that as well, and although it does load the information when you add the files, it should only take a minute or two to add a really large collection, and that information will be cached as long as you have those files in a playlist. Or you can save a playlist as an .fpl file.
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