XMMS
Encyclopedia
The X Multimedia System (XMMS) is a free
audio player
for Unix-like
systems.
, which was first released in May that year. As such, XMMS has supported Winamp 2 "classic" skins since its release. Though the original release was made under a license that did not provide any access to the program's source code
, it is now released under the GNU General Public License
.
On June 10, 1999, 4Front Technologies
decided to sponsor X11Amp development and the project was renamed to XMMS - the name being an acronym for X MultiMedia System. Most XMMS users take this to mean "X11 MultiMedia System" or "X Window System
MultiMedia System"; the official interpretation of the 'X' is 'Cross-platform'.
1.x toolkit, despite a major revision of GTK (2.x) being available for several years. The primary reason for this reluctance to upgrade is that many XMMS plugins (written by third parties) are dependent on the older version of GTK+ to properly function (e.g. about boxes and configuration dialogs). Many software developers also consider the XMMS codebase to be poorly designed and difficult to maintain. These factors led to various forks and related projects:
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XMMS currently supports the following audio
and video file formats:
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
audio player
Audio player (software)
An audio player is a kind of media player for playing back digital audio, including optical discs such as CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio, HDCD, audio files and streaming audio....
for Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
systems.
History
XMMS was originally written as X11Amp by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made to resemble WinampWinamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
, which was first released in May that year. As such, XMMS has supported Winamp 2 "classic" skins since its release. Though the original release was made under a license that did not provide any access to the program's source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
, it is now released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
On June 10, 1999, 4Front Technologies
4Front Technologies
4Front Technologies is the company behind the Open Sound System for Linux and Unix operating systems. Since June 1999, 4Front has also been sponsoring development of the XMMS music player.- External Link :*...
decided to sponsor X11Amp development and the project was renamed to XMMS - the name being an acronym for X MultiMedia System. Most XMMS users take this to mean "X11 MultiMedia System" or "X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
MultiMedia System"; the official interpretation of the 'X' is 'Cross-platform'.
Forks
XMMS has continued to use GTK+GTK+
GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...
1.x toolkit, despite a major revision of GTK (2.x) being available for several years. The primary reason for this reluctance to upgrade is that many XMMS plugins (written by third parties) are dependent on the older version of GTK+ to properly function (e.g. about boxes and configuration dialogs). Many software developers also consider the XMMS codebase to be poorly designed and difficult to maintain. These factors led to various forks and related projects:
- The Beep Media PlayerBeep Media PlayerThe Beep Media Player was a free audio player, based on the XMMS multimedia player. The lead developer was Milosz “deadchip” Derezynski. The BMP is mainly a port of XMMS to GTK+ 2 and, as such, integrates better with the look and feel of more recent versions of GNOME, Xfce, and, if using the...
, a fork of XMMS code that uses GTK+ 2, started around 2003- Youkihttp://youki.mp/, the remade continuation of Beep Media Player, started around the end of 2005
- AudaciousAudacious Media PlayerAudacious is a free software audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX-compatible systems such as Linux, with limited support for Microsoft Windows...
, a fork from Beep Media Player started around 2005 when BMP development ceased in favor of Youki
- A lesser known GTK+2 based fork (named XMMS2 but not associated the larger rewrite XMMS2XMMS2XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
), by Mohammed Sameer.
Features
Audio file format
An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. This data can be stored uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size. It can be a raw bitstream, but it is usually a container format or an audio data format with defined storage layer.-Types of...
and video file formats:
- AACAdvanced Audio CodingAdvanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
support is provided by the faad2 library, supporting m4a files - APE Monkey's AudioMonkey's AudioMonkey's Audio is a file format for audio data compression. Being a lossless format, Monkey's Audio does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as AAC, MP3, Vorbis and Musepack....
Codec .ape files - support provided by the mac-port project plugin - Audio CDRed Book (audio CD standard)Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of the Rainbow Books, a series of books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.The first edition of the Red Book was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony; it was adopted by the Digital Audio Disc...
, including CDDBCDDBCDDB, short for Compact Disc Database, is a database for software applications to look up audio CD information over the Internet. This is performed by a client which calculates a unique disc ID and then queries the database. As a result, the client is able to display the artist name, CD title,...
via FreeDBFreedbfreedb is a database of compact disc track listings, where all the content is under the GNU General Public License. It was originally based on the now-proprietary CDDB . As of April 24, 2006, the database holds just under 2,000,000 CDs...
lookup - FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
support is provided by a plugin in the FLAC library - IcecastIcecastIcecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/January 1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan to provide an open source...
and SHOUTcastSHOUTcastSHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...
streaming supported, and is compatible with WinampWinampWinamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
2 skinsSkin (computing)In computing, a skin is a custom graphical appearance achieved by the use of a graphical user interface that can be applied to specific software and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users....
. - libmikmod supported formats (including .XM, .MOD, .IT) See:MikMod Home
- JACKJACK Audio Connection KitJACK is a professional sound server daemon that provides real-time, low latency connections for both audio and MIDI data between applications that implement its API...
plug-in for support of the JACK Audio Connection Kit. - ModPlug plug-in for playing mod, s3m, xm, umx, it and other famous trackers
- mp3PROMp3PROmp3PRO is an audio compression algorithm that combines the MP3 audio format with spectral band replication compression methods. It claims to achieve transparency at lower bitrates than MP3, resulting in a file nearly half the size of standard MP3...
support is provided by a third party plugin (which does not support SHOUTcast title streaming) - MPEG Layer 1,2 and 3 (Also known as MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
), using the mpg123Mpg123mpg123 is a fast, free and console MPEG audio player software program for UNIX and Linux operating systems. mpg123 was ported to the Windows platform using Cygwin and MinGW. It supports MPEG-1 and -2, layers 1, 2 and 3. Its most common use is to play MP3 files...
library - MusepackMusepackMusepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s...
support using XMMS-Musepack plugin. - OGG Vorbis support is provided by a plug-in provided by xiph.org
- SHNShortenShorten is a file format used for compressing audio data. It is a form of data compression of files and is used to losslessly compress CD-quality audio files . Shorten is no longer developed and more recent lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio , TTA, and WavPack have become more...
support is provided by a plug-in provided by etreeEtreeetree, or electronic tree, is a music community created in the summer of 1998 for the online trading of live concerts. etree pioneered the standards for distributing lossless audio on the net and only permits its users to distribute the music of artists that allow the free taping and trading of...
. - speexSpeexSpeex is a patent-free audio compression format designed for speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm. Speex claims to be free of any patent restrictions and is licensed under the revised BSD...
high quality & ratio speech compression format via plugin - TTATTA (codec)True Audio is a free software, real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters.Also, .tta is the generic extension to filenames of audio files created by True Audio codec.- Codec overview :...
support is provided by a third party plugin - UADE plug-in provides Most AmigaAmigaThe Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
music formats. - WAVWAVWaveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
- WavPackWavPackWavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...
with support provided by a third party plugin - WMAWindows Media AudioWindows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...
Limited support provided by third party plugin.
See also
- Comparison of audio player softwareComparison of audio player softwareThe following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs.For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player which can only play audio files...
- XMMS2XMMS2XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
- AudaciousAudacious Media PlayerAudacious is a free software audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX-compatible systems such as Linux, with limited support for Microsoft Windows...