Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Play Musepack audio files using the command line UNIX
Musepack is a fairly new high-quality lossy audio format that is quickly gaining popularity among the audiophile community. There was no way to play these files on a Mac without decoding them to large uncompressed audio files first. After becoming quite peeved at this, I found a way to play these files directly, without having to deal with any file conversions.

To do this, you must have esd (The Enlightened Sound Daemon) installed. I recommend using fink's port. (fink install esd). After doing this, grab the OS X binary [48K download] I built using Frank Klemm's mppdec source. After unzipping, open up a Terminal and cd to the directory containing the unzipped mppdec and follow these instructions:
% chmod u+x mppdec
(to change the file permissions to enable you to execute the binary)
% sudo mv mppdec /usr/local/bin/
(OPTIONAL: this allows you to run the command by simply typing 'mppdec' anywhere)
% mppdec FILENAME.mpc | esdcat
and you will hear beautiful mpc audio. You can also use wildcards:
% mppdec *.mpc | esdcat
or even m3u playlists:
% mppdec playlist.m3u | esdcat
Also, type mppdec for more command line options.
    •    
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (1 vote cast)
 
[10,303 views]  

Play Musepack audio files using the command line | 7 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Play Musepack audio files using the command line' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Play Musepack audio files using the command line
Authored by: blessingx on Apr 02, '03 02:38:51PM

FINALLY!

I know this may never catch on, but one stop over to Hydrogen Audio ( http://www.hydrogenaudio.org ) and you'll see it has a lot of supporters on the edge of the compression world.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Play Musepack audio files using the command line
Authored by: fixable on Apr 02, '03 08:27:51PM

Is there a way to get the encoder compiled for Mac, too? I'd love to experiment with encoding some of my CD's and comparing the .mpc's to mp3 and AIFF etc...

Right now, I have it installed, but I'm having a hard time finding music to listen to the quality of Musepack.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Play Musepack audio files using the command line
Authored by: master on Apr 02, '03 10:58:20PM

i have been unable to compile the encoder under OS X ! i have been doing all of the encoding under intel machines.

from what i see on the site, the author has not publiclically released the source for his mppenc (he has a link to a pgp encrypted tarball). underneath though, he has a link to a package containing both mppenc and mppdec that i am unable to compile.

i will try a couple of more things over the weekend but i don't have time now as i am swamped with school work, but i wonder if someone else will have better luck.



[ Reply to This | # ]
esound, not esd
Authored by: at_sym on Apr 02, '03 10:53:38PM
The command is actually fink install esound.

[ Reply to This | # ]
thanks
Authored by: 1stunna on Apr 02, '03 11:13:41PM

thank you thank you thank you. i mean it. thanks you.
oh, and how hard would it be to map this to a gui, or even have iTunes run it? all i need is someone to say its easy and ill devote my life to it.

oh yeah, thanks



[ Reply to This | # ]
thanks
Authored by: thornrag on Jul 16, '03 01:28:17AM

Audio Hijack Pro can be made to pipe the audio output of something like iTunes into esd for you.

Check out http://www.rogueamoeba.com/

There's a discussion of the PipeDream plugin in their newsletter thing I forget what it's called. if nothing else, AH Pro is fun!



[ Reply to This | # ]
esound, not esd
Authored by: 1stunna on Apr 02, '03 11:46:22PM

all the mpc files i have tried play a hissing sound with the song in the background. am i doing something wrong? if i decompress the aiff is fine, and i decompress it at 28x, so its not a hardware prob.

any ideas?



[ Reply to This | # ]