dBpowerAMP Music Converter R9 Beta 5

[Spoon]

Here is the real deal, Beta 5...and it is onlyabout 9 days until full release (4th July)!! so I need some serious testing :)

This one adds three major changes -

Firstly when getting the popup info for explorer I now call a seperate program to get it, why? so if it crashes it will not bring down the shell.

Next we have off line freedb option in audio cd input.

and finally Mp3 (Lame) gets the alt presets!!, it also shows on the page the preset settings whilst it is selected...nice.

Download:

www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dMC-r9-beta5.exe

1.4MB


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All changes:

Audio CD Input - Send a (WM_USER + 101) message to Audio CD Input it starts ripping
Audio CD Input - Options Menu gets a new 'Character Replacement' option window - now possible to set the characters that are replaced and with what (certain characters such as * / cannot be used in filenames)
Audio CD Input - Added Track right click menu pictures
Audio CD Input - Power Pack Option - Compilation button gets a menu for multidisc albums - so can set a track offset number like 10..11..12
Audio CD Input - Option to output to folder is also on CD Input page, this has fixed a bug where installed on a fresh machine and never ripped with options, it would try to output to 'Same as Original', ie an Audio CD.
Audio CD Input - Option on 'Rip as One' to set From and To Frames - for finer control
Audio CD Input - File Creation page - Remembers the last 10 entries for quick selection
Audio CD Input - Added an option to spin up drive before ripping, a minimum spin up time can also be set
Audio CD Input - so can work with proxy that needs a password
Audio CD Input - Now works with ofline freedb db (select server on options page)

CDA Input Codec - Supplies more info for popup info tip, now more compatible with dAP

Codecs - Added 'Professional Frequency Conversion' option to dMCs Configuration page, the following codecs are compatible with this option - Wave, mp3 (Lame), Ogg Vorbis, WMA v8
Wave Compression Codec - Enhanced handling of Stereo >> Mono attenuation

dMC Config - for Mp3 - Added option to create V1 and v2 id tag files
dMC - Displays Elapsed time
dmc & Audio CD Input - Added try power pack buttons (in place of normal PP buttons) that show if has never been tried.

Shell Popup info - calls a 2nd prog (GetPopup) to get info - so if crashes it does not bring shell down

mp3 Lame - uses Latest Lame 3.93a
mp3 Lame - Now added in the Alt presets, yhea!!
mp3 Lame - first option page says 'Encoding Preset xxx' if encoding to a preset, Also the presets default options are set and said options are disabled
mp3 Lame - Bug Fix - some presets were using VBR, but the VBR header was not being written
mp3 - added .mpa files to the Mp3 decoder

bug fix - when ripping from a CD, it makes sure that delete source files is not checked.
bug fix - If using 'Auto Rip' - now will not show the options page - will just convert
bug fix - If using 'Auto Rip' and 'No freedb Messages' and the Disc is not found in freedb the disc is now auto ripped
bug fix - Audio CD Input would incorrectly switch of NT Built-in CD Communication method if ASPI was not installed
bug fix - Well sort of, reworded the warning about 'DSP Effects in use' when using Aux Input, to mention 'Volume Normalize'
bug fix - Audio CD Input - if there is a background image, it is now drawn correctly
bug fix - Auto Rip now works again
bug fix - Audio CD Input - removes '..' from the end of folders and file names (as is not allowed)

[MODatic]

Alt presets!!!!! Horaaay!!!

alt preset standard through DMC produces exactly the same output as the CLI, haven't tested the other presets yet. Just curious, haven't been paying attention to lame dev recently, they actually added that stuff into the dll? Also, I wouldn't mind having the min & max bitrate sliders disabled when a preset is selected.

Offline FreeDB testing is out of my reach on my 56K modem and pop up info tips also work fine for me.

[Razgo]

I just tested the offline data base and it works perfect!! this will certainly satisfy everyone who wants off line data base thats for sure.

PS

how would i remove the recorded entries in cd audio input so i can retest the same CD?

[Spoon]

>how would i remove the recorded entries in cd audio input so i can retest the same CD?

I just manually type over a few entries, such as artist then click Freedb.

[Spoon]

Apparantly they have been in for a number of months, it was not documented - so you had to download the source code an look at the values...

[totalXSive]

The best just got better :)

Two comments:
1. The 'Time Elapsed' counter keeps on going until you close the Conversion dialog, even if the conversion is complete.
2. dMC Configuration reports that it is using Lame 3.93a - EncSpot 2 Basic reports 3.92 on a file that I've just encoded with dMC. Which is correct?

And is Alt Preset CBR at 160Kbps better than a normal CBR 160Kbps MP3 using Joint Stereo?

[MODatic]

What? You didn't even mention the time elapsed counter Spoon, I've been waiting on that one for a while hooray!!! :supersmil

Confirmed on my machine for the counter not stopping after a conversion.


dMC Configuration reports that it is using Lame 3.93a - EncSpot 2 Basic reports 3.92 on a file that I've just encoded with dMC. Which is correct?

EncSpot is correct since when I download and encode songs with the latest 3.93 alphas, both EncSpot and dBpowerAMP report the files as being Lame 3.93 files.


And is Alt Preset CBR at 160Kbps better than a normal CBR 160Kbps MP3 using Joint Stereo?

By far!!! There are many things that normal CBR does not use that the alt preset CBRs do eg. better ATH curve, nspsytune, higher lowpass, better noise shaping...

edit: yes you did mention it :rolleyes:

[totalXSive]

By far!!! There are many things that normal CBR does not use that the alt preset CBRs do eg. better ATH curve, nspsytune, higher lowpass, better noise shaping...

Good good :). Looks like I'm going to be doing more re-ripping than I initially expected...

[MODatic]

I know your pain :D

[Spoon]

Thanks for pointing out these.

Modatic - do you fancy writing a small section on Lame and the best use of the presets: ie sort of :

For Portable players: xzy
Best Sound/Space for Computers: xxxx
Best Sounding Files: yyyy

[MODatic]

Sure I'll do that, shouldn't take me too long since I've already written a guide for my site talking about the use of the alt presets, just have to expand it a bit and mention how to use the alt presets through DMC. Link (http://www.modatic.net/audio/altpresets_explained.php)

[Spoon]

This beta has been replaced.