xmp - Extended Module Player

Contributor Joined: 26 Jul 2007

http://xmp.sourceforge.net/ wrote:

The Extended Module Player, or xmp, is a portable command-line module player for Unix and Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, HP-UX and MacOS X, and also QNX, BeOS, Windows, OS/2 and AmigaOS. Xmp plays over 80 mainstream and obscure module formats from Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Apple IIgs and PC.

I did a simple cross-compile with a few modifications See below for the wiki page and a pre-compiled pz2 module. Select a supported file (see xmp's official page) via file browser and xmp will be launched as an external application (requires a nightly pz2 build from the Downloads page). The command-line xmp binary can also be launched via loader2 or a script file.

During playback, use the iPod's forward/rewind buttons to skip patterns. Press the play/pause button to pause/resume playback and the menu button to exit xmp. Playlist support has not yet been added here and neither has volume control (5/5.5g owners, beware and Protect Your Ears), though it should not be hard to implement that (will just make scroll-wheel change volume). I'll probably be doing a proper port (i.e. porting it into an actual pz2 module, most likely using a mpdc and mikmod borrowed interface/code) later (after which I'll add a pz2 module page).

Try the module with various different supported files. It should be able to play just about all of mikmod's supported formats and much more (no APUN, DSM or UNI, but almost 70 more formats), though I've only tested it with a few. You can find hundreds of free files at The Mod Archive; download some and test them with the above archive. Also try testing different formats (you'll need to find other sites) that the official site has listed. Please post your results and feedback here. Thanks!

Wiki page: http://ipodlinux.org/xmp (needs cleaning up)
PZ2 module: http://ipodlinux.org/Image:Xmp-1.0.tar.gz
(need a nightly pz2 build and file browser module)

Formats confirmed to work (to be updated):
xm, s3m, it, mod

~Keripo

http://ipodlinux.org/User:BleuLlama · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:44 pm

Out of curiosity, what does it offer over Mikmodule? How does format accuracy compare, how many voices can be played back on the iPod?

one good test, find "Jewel" by "Spieg". 150803 on The Mod Archive... near the end, it gets to 28 simultaneous voices which does bursty stuttery playback in mikmodule.

(Not meaning to be critical at all... i'm just curious. Smile

)

And feel free to modify MikModule to squeeze in the XMP engine. Having that option might be really cool, plus you can leverage off of the mikmodule playlist, viz, and interface engine...

For what it's worth, some other good mod testcases (and good songs)

"U4ic Nightmare" by U4ia 50965 - when the first "2..3.. break!" sample plays, there should be no stuck notes, like MikModule does.

"Astronauts Requiem" by U4ia 34148 - it does nested looping. some engines loop forever. Wink

"dragonsfunk" by Moby 40329 - the pitchbends at the beginning often play back wrong on some playback engines

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

Yorgle wrote:

Out of curiosity, what does it offer over Mikmodule? How does format accuracy compare, how many voices can be played back on the iPod?

To be honest, I only stumbled upon xmp after checking out the DSLinux port. Did a quick cross-compile and found it to work straight-out-of-the-box (I only modified the interactive commands so that you can use the iPod's buttons).

Quote:

one good test, find "Jewel" by "Spieg". 150803 on The Mod Archive... near the end, it gets to 28 simultaneous voices which does bursty stuttery playback in mikmodule.

(Not meaning to be critical at all... i'm just curious. Smile

)

...

For what it's worth, some other good mod testcases (and good songs)

"U4ic Nightmare" by U4ia 50965 - when the first "2..3.. break!" sample plays, there should be no stuck notes, like MikModule does.

"Astronauts Requiem" by U4ia 34148 - it does nested looping. some engines loop forever. Wink

"dragonsfunk" by Moby 40329 - the pitchbends at the beginning often play back wrong on some playback engines

Never having used MikMod or xmp in the past, I really can't do much judging here. The only "big" one I tried was "a-depres.xm" (here) which still played smoothly even when I executed it in the background and moved around in podzilla2 (though it because a bit laggy like mpd when I did some rapid scrolling). I was able to nestle-launch pz0 5 times (instead of the normal Cool

so it shouldn't be too much of a resource hog. Either way, I doubt it'll be smoother than mikmod but I'll try the ones you mentioned.

Quote:

And feel free to modify MikModule to squeeze in the XMP engine. Having that option might be really cool, plus you can leverage off of the mikmodule playlist, viz, and interface engine...

The xmp source code is all over the place but I should be able to turn it into a simple pz2 module. Haven't looked at the mikmod source code either but if it's a simple "play song and get info/progress" then it should be manageable.

~Keripo

http://ipodlinux.org/User:BleuLlama · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:06 pm

Noted. I'll grab it and try it out myself when I get home tonight. Smile

Regardless of performance, cheers on the port! Very Happy

Mikmod is dodgy at times, so I personally welcome anything along similar lines. Wink

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

Results:

"Astronauts Requiem" (astro2.mod) - No issues as far as I can tell. Near the end there was a lot of new line prints but it finished properly.

"dragonsfunk" (dragonsfunk.mod) - Play-backed fine but then again I don't have anything to compare it to ; )

"U4ic Nightmare" (nitemare.mod) - Near the beginning output from the right earbud gets stuck in a loop of sort but the left earbud goes on. I'm guessing that's the issue you're referring to? ; /

"Jewel" (jewel.xm) - In the last ten patterns or so playback is quite stuttery. I'm guessing the iPod is just not powerful enough or whatnot since "a-depres.xm" (which uses 24 channels vs this one's 28 channels) plays back completely smooth and without any issues (as far as I could tell).

You shouldn't take my word though; these formats are way before my time. This is probably the first time I've listened to a full .mod file Wink

~Keripo

http://ipodlinux.org/User:BleuLlama · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:32 pm

sounds like performance wise, it's about on par.

one more test, if you wouldn't mind:

157343 littleli.it "Little Lies" (Fleetwood Mac remix). it's a huge file, about 7.5 megs. It works in MikMod, but takes about 30seconds to load. During the chorus, it gets sputtery, but otherwise sounds good with mikmod.

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

Yorgle wrote:

sounds like performance wise, it's about on par.

one more test, if you wouldn't mind:

157343 littleli.it "Little Lies" (Fleetwood Mac remix). it's a huge file, about 7.5 megs. It works in MikMod, but takes about 30seconds to load. During the chorus, it gets sputtery, but otherwise sounds good with mikmod.

Hehe, it was loading for about 30 seconds (I counted 34 but usually the binary takes about 5 seconds before starting playback regardless of the file), then crashed with endless scrolling text (I could kinda make out the words "allocation failed" and a lot of 0s but it was scrolling too fast and blurry). Remember that this is an external binary at the moment that I'm launching from pz2 and is probably far less optimized/uses a much larger footprint than mikmod. Interestingly enough, during the loading part the console was a normal (for the nano) black-back-blue-text but changed to red-black, then changed to white-blue. Interesting BSoD for iPL O_o

Contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Location: Ontario, Canada

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ndkeyhkxeh

^ Updated binary. Now uses the scroll wheel for increasing/decreasing volume and updated with xmp's CVS code. Also included the patch files I use and the script I use for compiling it (files not placed in proper hierarchy). I'll update the wiki when I have time (most likely not any time soon).

Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Location: /mnt/zowki

I don't get this. What exactly does xmp do? Is it a music player or terminal computer emulator? You guys are confusing me...

Moderator Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Location: Australia

zowki wrote:

I don't get this. What exactly does xmp do? Is it a music player or terminal computer emulator? You guys are confusing me...

It's an audio player, it plays music modules.

Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Location: /mnt/zowki

Rufus wrote:

zowki wrote:

I don't get this. What exactly does xmp do? Is it a music player or terminal computer emulator? You guys are confusing me...

It's an audio player, it plays music modules.

Thats cool I see what a music module is now! It seems like a really simple audio file. I know this may be a ridiculous question but what are the system requirements for the most simplest of module players? (I want to know if it can run on 16 bit 8mhz microcontroller)