ModPlayers

Table of Contents

This is the first part of a 2-part article on Amiga modules players.

The second part is here, comparing various formats and players.

 

Introduction

Amigas have always been a fertile ground for artists, since the first drawing by Warhol to the demo scene of today to the thousands of music created on and for them. There are many, many ways to play music on the Amigas but module players are the most popular so I prepared a history and a comparison of modules players for the Amigas .

 

History

(To be written...)

The Web is full of interesting information of course! For example, this page provides downloads of the same songs in different formats. ModLand also provides easy access to songs in a wide variety of formats. ExoticA (an Amiga and retro gaming/computer music interest wiki) provides much useful information about modules and players as well as downloads to players for EaglePlayer and others.

 

State of the Art

There are so many instruments, sounds, and songs formats and players out there, it's hard to keep track of their strengths and weaknesses... and coverage! Some can play only one type of songs while other have powerful extension mechanisms and many extensions for many formats. I used Aminet (and Wikipedia) and chose the top downloaded players, excluding players for instruments and sounds. I found 24 players, which I tested using 45 music files in 24 different main formats (excluding variants) for a total of 190MB:

 

While building this list and testing these players, I made some interesting findings:

  • I excluded AmiDeck v1.1 because it's only a proof-of-concept for a CD player.
  • AmigaAMP uses the MPEGA.library and ModPlug.library among others.
  • AModPlay uses the excellent BFBPlayMaster.library and its 13 replayers.
  • I excluded AMOS ModPlay v3.00 because it crashes my Amiga immediately upon starting.
  • DAPlayer takes up all the CPU for a long while when trying to play a song whose format it doesn't recognise (DAPlayer Identify Task).
  • DeliTracker comes with many built-in and external players.
  • EaglePlayer also comes with many built-in and external players. Besides, it can also use DeliTracker players , which is very useful when one of its own crashes, like PSDI (see note 11 below).
  • EMPY Player v3.0 crashes with SystemPatch v3.3. SystemPatch should be run with its -TLFS option.
  • MadPlay v0.14.2b can only decode and play MPEG files and wouldn't produce any music for me.
  • Plady v0.72 does not work well with MuForce enabled. It also doesn't close and generally freeze when clicking on some of its buttons.
  • Play16 v1.10 can play lots of formats of instruments, including taken directly from songs, but it's not a music player per se.
  • PlayOGG comes with many, many tools and players, which make it very versatile! (For example, it uses med2xm to play MMD3 songs, xmp for many other formats, etc.)
  • PTPlayer v6.1 is an ASM code to play ProTracker modules in games, not a player in itself.
  • SimplePlay v3.4 only exists for AmigaOS4.
  • SoX is really a music/sound processing tool rather than a player per se.

 

The last three changes:

Tygre - 2022-12-04 07:28:15 pm  |  Tygre - 2022-04-13 12:57:16 pm  |  Tygre - 2022-04-13 12:55:29 pm