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I have been using a player called WinAmp and it plays just about everything I could throw at it including .m4a files.
What I don't understand is how Apple can charge you money to use their file extension. It boggles my mind
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It's not the extension they charge for.
Video and audio compression have long been a minefield of patented algorithms. The patent owners charge you for using their patented technology.
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(Yesterday, 04:57 AM)JRace Wrote: It's not the extension they charge for.
Video and audio compression have long been a minefield of patented algorithms. The patent owners charge you for using their patented technology. So, if the QB64PE staff was willing to pay Apple for their patented technology then it could be done!?
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(Yesterday, 05:32 AM)eoredson Wrote: (Yesterday, 04:57 AM)JRace Wrote: It's not the extension they charge for.
Video and audio compression have long been a minefield of patented algorithms. The patent owners charge you for using their patented technology. So, if the QB64PE staff was willing to pay Apple for their patented technology then it could be done!?
It could. Do you want to sponsor the $10,000 per version release cost?
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i'm still scratching my head with half the formats added by @a740g. also what it takes to use a vsti, because i can't use visual studio right now.
but what is the obsession with what's actually an oudated, proprietary audio format? how many macos users post on this forum? do they really care about it? how many other people would be glad to have that format instead of mp3, maybe ogg, maybe qoa when it's ready...
for example, a few music creation applications are allowing flac import as well as wav. because they are both lossless. and the source code for flac is free to have and modify. including mp3 support is much more sketchy and often left out by music app developers, although users cry out for it. it is lossy. m4a could be lossless but it's not my point. it might not matter from the user's point of view.
i'm not sure but the ffmpeg library exclusively coming with audacity, while it was in version 2 used to load m4a and convert from it. i wonder what it took the "audacity team" to be able to do that. m4p was another story. i absolutely had to burn those format files to music cd-r with itunes to be able to use it anyway away from that program.
try to convince people to use julia, or python or other programming language for music playback as well as visual technology. people are most interested in the easiest, fastest route.
somebody asked for "free" audio format converter. get ffmpeg:
Quote: mov/mp4/3gp
Demuxer for Quicktime File Format & ISO/IEC Base Media File Format (ISO/IEC 14496-12 or
MPEG-4 Part 12, ISO/IEC 15444-12 or JPEG 2000 Part 12).
Registered extensions: mov, mp4, m4a, 3gp, 3g2, mj2, psp, m4b, ism, ismv, isma, f4v
i did boldface in quotation. this is from "man" page for "ffmpeg-formats (1)". i am on linux but it shouldn't be different for windows.
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Most of the formats were added to achieve parity with QB64-SDL: MID, RMI, MOD, XM, S3M, and IT. Some of the less common formats were inherited from the underlying libraries we use, while others were added for their retro appeal.
- AV, AIFF, AIFC, FLAC, OGG, MP3: These were inherited from the miniaudio and stb_vorbis libraries.
- MUS, HMI, HMP, HMQ, KAR, LDS, MDS, MIDS, RCP, R36, G18, G36, RMI, MID, MIDI, XFM, XMI: These formats come from foo_midi (the same library that enables MID and RMI support).
- QOA: An open and free audio format designed for low-complexity decoding, making it suitable for games.
- RAD, AHX, HVL: These were added due to their nostalgic, retro sound quality.
For using VSTi you really do not need to use Visual Studio, unless you want to compile the VSTi Host yourself. I left the pre-compiled binaries in "MIDIPlayer64.zip" in the "soundsbanks" directory. It also has the Yamaha S-YXG50 VSTi. See this post: https://qb64phoenix.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2979
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Quote:It could. Do you want to sponsor the $10,000 per version release cost?
Heh. No.
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