GP32 Mo3, An Interesting Evolution Of Mod Music Format


timofonic

GP Mafia
Joined
May 20, 2004
Messages
399
Hello,

I was seen this forum thread about a petition for release the specs of MO3 format, this format seems a very interesting format and could be nice for all those trackers and other stuff like reduce a lot the size of the mod collections ;)
Webpage about the MO3 format

Some info about the format:

MO3 is a file format, encapsulating the features of several "MOD" formats (IT / XM / S3M / MTM / MOD), but with one big difference - MP3 and OGG compressed samples. A lossless codec is also incorporated for any samples that don't like lossy encoding, and the whole file structure is compressed too.

All this makes it possible to have great reductions in file sizes with practically identical sound quality. Infact, MO3 allows greater quality compositions because MP3/OGG encoding works best with 16-bit samples, so there's no reason to use low quality 8-bit samples anymore.

* MP3/OGG compression: Any command-line MP3 or OGG encoder can be used with the MO3 encoder.

* Lossless compression: Samples that don't compress well with MP3/OGG encoding can still be reduced in size with the lossless codec.

* Structure compression: All the non-sample data is also compressed.

* Sample specific tuning: The encoding sample/bit rates are individually adjustable for each sample, with visual comparison of original/encoded samples.

* Text removal: Message/instrument/sample texts can optionally be removed for a further size reduction.

* Decompressable: MO3 files can be decoded back to their original formats using the UNMO3 utility (see below).

* Playable: MO3 files can be played by XMPlay and any software that uses the BASS library, also by other software in conjunction with UNMO3.
(This is one of the problems actually, with the specs it will can be played in a lot of other systems, like GP32 ;))

SIGN HERE THE PETITION FOR HAVE THE MO3 FORMAT SPECS!
 
Uhh...Theres one problem. It takes half of the cpu power to play mp3's and it takes almost all of the cpu power to play oggs. Playing MO3's is likely to require more cpu power than we have.
 
Uhh...Theres one problem. It takes half of the cpu power to play mp3's and it takes almost all of the cpu power to play oggs. Playing MO3's is likely to require more cpu power than we have.

Not neccessarily - depends how its done.

Perhaps it loads the samples (mp3) and uncompresses them at load-time. This would make load-time very intensive, but playing would be the same as a normal mod after that. But since it takes the GP32, say, 3/4 of its time to decompress and play an mp3, than a mod file with 1 minute worth of samples would still take 45 seconds to load and decompress :(

EDIT: Sorry, by 'decompress' I mean 'decode' - you know what I mean.
 
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