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Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 17:58:33 +0100 (MET)
From: Andy Lo A Foe <arloafoe@cs.vu.nl>
To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: [ANN] AlsaPlayer PR2
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Hi everyone,

Ok, I did some work on AlsaPlayer today. In the spirit of "release
early and often" I've made another tarball of the source directory.
There's also a shared binary on my site. Get it from:

http://orbital.xs4all.nl/alsa/

or 

ftp://orbital.xs4all.nl/pub/alsa/

The README follows:

----------------------------

*** AlsaPlayer PR2 ***



Changes since last PR (Pre Release)
-----------------------------------

- Somewhat usable now
- Fixed loads of race coditions/threading issues
- Implemented all scopes for 8-, 16- and 32-bit X displays
- Added more threading (each scope runs in its own thread)
- Functional FX and SCOPES button
- Software volume and balance controls (leaves the hardware mixer alone)
- Minor GUI redesign (glade is ok)
- Double buffered counters
- Further design on Playlist layout (it's *NOT* working yet)
- Minor code cleanups, still very hackish/ugly


Compiling
---------

Absolutely required:
- alsa-lib latest
- GTK+ 1.1.12 or newer
- Thread-safe X libs (RedHat 5.0+)
- Knowledge of Makefiles/C/C++ (only if compiling fails)

Unpack the sources, type make, and everything should hopefully build.
If you want to rebuild the amp engine, change to the amp directory and do a
"make clean all" build. Autoconf is planned for the final release (I have to
learn how it works first). 


Running
-------

Fire up AlsaPlayer. Press the Play button. A file dialog will appear. Select 
an MP3 file and press OK. The dialog will not go away (press cancel or close 
the window). The file should start playing (if not, press the PLAY button),
buggy I know. You should hear the MP3 (if not, check your mixer levels!)



Fun stuff
---------

Try out the PITCH slider. It's hardcoded at -200 to 200% for now. Lots of
polishing to do still so if you hear crap or nothing at all, STOP and RELOAD
the song. Also try the FX (effects) button. Currently only REVERB is in. I
don't even know if it's really a genuine reverb effect, but it's fun. Try the
presets.

And finally the SCOPES button. Pressing this one will pop up 3 different scopes, all running simultaneously. You need some spare CPU cycles for this! 
There is a fourth scope (FFTscope) but disabled right now. If you're brave
try figuring out how to get it up :) .. It's currently out because I still have
some exploring to do with threaded gtk+ applications.


Bug reporting
-------------

Send you comments/patches/rants to <arloafoe@cs.vu.nl>. This is going to be a
busy schoolperiod for me, so don't expect too much of this project yet. But feel
free to play around with the code. I've got some pretty nice idea's, they just
need to be coded...Let me hear yours...


Latest version
--------------
ftp://orbital.xs4all.nl/pub/alsa/ (being moved to the ALSA main site soon)


-------------------------

Thanks,

Andy
--
Andy Lo A Foe, arloafoe@cs.vu.nl |  Linux v2.2.0pre | PII 266 
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~arloafoe    | GSM: 0622-440695 | Bebox 133
http://orbital.xs4all.nl/andy    |   ICQ: 7472949   | IRCNet: Adnans


