[Flash] Amiga Music Replay

[benny!]

Hi all,

I spend some time in the last days investigating libraries/sources to replay amiga music wihtin the Flash platform. I want to share my current results with you and of course I would love to hear your experiences, suggestions and feedback.

Here are the libraries/sources I had a look at so far:

FLOD Pro

http://www.photonstorm.com/flod

It supports the .mod Amiga format and works quite well. Using the Beginner's Guide it is really easy to make it work.


FLODEx

http://www.photonstorm.com/archives/720/flodex-1-01-sidmon-future-composer-and-bp-soundmod-supported

This is by the same author of FLOD. It is a replay library for the following synthetic music formats:

- FC (my personal favorite!!!)
- BP Soundmon
- Sidmon1 & Sidmon2
- Delta Music 1
- Delta Music 2 Player
- Digital Mugician Player

All in all, the usage of the lib is as easy as the FLOD Pro version. The sound quality is surprisingly good, too!


FLXMP

http://code.google.com/p/flxmp/

FLXMP stands for Flash Extended Module Player and it is one of the rare projects which offers the replay routine for FastTracker modules (.XM). However it is in a really early stage and a lot of tracker features are not yet implemented.


Conclusion (so far)

It is cool to see that there exists Amiga music replayers for the Flash platform. For the .MOD (4channel) format there seems to be quite stable versions available already. Even the soundquality of FlodEx for some exotic formats is good.

A drawback with all these players is that it consumes CPU power. CPU power you actually need for your games/demo fx. So, it is really hard to say if it is a good idea to have a comparable expensice audio replay when you could use a cheap MP3 replay.

I will keep this post/thread updated.

More known projects:

- 8Bitboy Had a quick look at it. Could not get it to work, but I give it another change soon
- FMP It is written in haXe - so you need to convert it to AS3.0 first in order to use it

[Dr.Death]

Amazing find mate do you think we could use this on our site??

Now that would make it EVEN better 

[benny!]

Let's wait and see ;-) But tbh, using Flash you really need to watch on the performance site. Unfortunately, all those
libraries consumes CPU power (of course). So, performance-wise a simple MP3 is the best. But will see.

However, if you think about a background-music for the complete forum - this won't work as expected, since the forum software does a compelte site-reload each time you press on a link. That would mean the music would stop/restart on each pageload unless you do not put a music player in a popup.

Will see how it turns out.

Btw, during my research I find the following source. The complete synth/playback is written in Actionscript. The quality is just amazin IMHO:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/georg-feil-1985-synth-sample

Best,
benny!

[Dr.Death]

Lets hope i just thought it would be cool something a bit like Plopbox really would be good for the site ??

[combatking0]

However, if you think about a background-music for the complete forum - this won't work as expected, since the forum software does a compelte site-reload each time you press on a link. That would mean the music would stop/restart on each pageload unless you do not put a music player in a popup.

There is a way around this - you could write a Flash Shared Object once a second, or once every half second, to the client's cache which tells the Flash music player which track is playing and how far through it currently is.

It could even include other data, such as the current volume level, etc.

I'm working on adding this feature to my own Flash 8 MP3 player also, but it would be interesting to see those Amiga sound libraries in motion.

[Shockwave]

Lets hope i just thought it would be cool something a bit like Plopbox really would be good for the site ??

But there lies the biggest issue I have with the Flash player, if I want to listen to tunes, I usually open Plopbox or Nectarine in another window ....  I'm pretty certain that other people would do the same.  The idea is not dead yet but the important thing is to get the new front end coded first.

[Moroboshisan]

dumb-minded-guy@work...

is it nested-frames pages an option?

I mean: opening a 0px frame (doesn't matter if horizontal or vertical) that embeds the needed replayer routine/s (again: doesn't matter if JS/Flash) would do the trick? while in the other remaining frame you open the rest of the site/forum page/s?

(Yes, I know... I hated frames back then when I did my first experiences in HTML... I told you, I'm dumb!!)

[Shockwave]

There are no bad ideas mate, but I don't like frameset.. It's important to me that this page is standards compliant and Frameset is a deprecated tag.

[Dr.Death]

Your right m8 i was just thinking something like a little intro kind of thing with different tunes witch we could poll each month to change & tell people about the site & upcoming contests & other stuff what do you think of that idea??

[Moroboshisan]

[...]Frameset is a deprecated tag.

...OMG... I didn't know!!! ... my HTML days are gone long ago... haven't you noticed that?!? %-)

o_O'  ... I told you... I always hated those damn frames...

[benny!]

However, if you think about a background-music for the complete forum - this won't work as expected, since the forum software does a compelte site-reload each time you press on a link. That would mean the music would stop/restart on each pageload unless you do not put a music player in a popup.

There is a way around this - you could write a Flash Shared Object once a second, or once every half second, to the client's cache which tells the Flash music player which track is playing and how far through it currently is.

It could even include other data, such as the current volume level, etc.

I'm working on adding this feature to my own Flash 8 MP3 player also, but it would be interesting to see those Amiga sound libraries in motion.

The idea behind this sounds nice - but I doubt that this will be a comfortable solution. If I understand you right, you want to save the current position of the played song on a page load and restore it when the new page is loaded. Still this would mean that the music is not played continously, is it? Guess most ppl would not like it.

Best,
benny!

[combatking0]

The only way to play it continuously is to use either a frameset or a popup.

The popup may be the more widely accepted solution, although some popup blockers may prevent it from working.

We could give users the option to use either the popup, or to use the save & reload method if they are "popup paranoid".

[benny!]

Yup, that's true. Guess a popup would work for most ppl, but offering a choice is of course a gentle way not to upset users.

Btw, I am a bit surprised about the vivid reaction about the whole Plopbox topic. Did not expect that ppl really would like to have something like a mod player when browsing the forum.

[Shockwave]

Personally I'd prefer to load Plopbox in another window, the banner will be as cool as hell anyway!

[benny!]

Personally I'd prefer to load Plopbox in another window, the banner will be as cool as hell anyway!

Yeah, I guess having Plopbox in another tab is fine (for now) ...

[Dr.Death]

I am glad this is not dead i really do think it would be a great ting for our site 

[benny!]

I give a small example of the FlodEx library in this thread:

http://www.dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=5085.0