Benben v0.5.0 Going Full Steam

Now that RemiMonitor v0.1.0 is out, I'm going back to working on my primary project, Benben. Right off the bat, the changes that are coming in the next version (v0.5.0) are going to be BIG, so let's start with those.

Benben Homepage

The Big Ones for v0.5.0

I'll just put it bluntly: Benben will no longer be "just" a VGM player starting with v0.5.0. While playing VGMs are not going away and will still be one of the big core features of Benben, the player is also going to start supporting additional formats:

Module files, including but not limited to .mod, .xm, and .s3m (already implemented in trunk).

FLAC (already implemented in trunk)

Opus (work has started)

Ogg Vorbis (work has started)

MP3, MP2, and MP1 (not yet implemented)

MIDI

Follow the progress on the v0.5.0 milestone page

Essentially, the more I used Benben, the more I found myself wanting to use it for all my other music as well. The interface just fit into my habits perfectly, it had the features I wanted, and its song-specific configs ended up being quite useful. So it only made sense to start expanding Benben to support additional formats.

As mentioned above, FLAC and module files are already playable using the repository's trunk code. FLAC files are done 100% in Crystal using my own codec in my RemiAudio library, while module files are currently handled using bindings to libxmp. All of these formats will also be renderable in parallel to WAV/Au files just like VGM files currently. Opus will be available via libopus bindings, Vorbis via libvorbis bindings, and both of these will a custom Ogg demuxer written in Crystal. MP3/MP2/MP1 support will likely arrive via libmpg123 bindings.

The addition of MIDI support will be done via my Haematite library, and will essentially turn Benben into a full replacement for my older midi123 program. So all of the features of midi123 will be available in Benben, plus some new ones. This change in particular came about as I realized just how much player code I was duplicating by updating midi123, and the benefits that would be gained from a combined code base.

Smaller Things in v0.5.0

Benben v0.5.0 will also come with a few smaller additions and changes:

High quality resampling (linear/zero order hold/three qualities of sinc)

Changing the play queue up while Benben is playing

More customization options for the interface

Benben will receive updates to finally support the VRC7 chip via YunoSynth

Lots of internal improvements

Timeline

I'm currently aiming for a release by the end of summer for all of this. There's a lot to test this time around, including changes to the configuration file and how configurations are handled by the player internally, so that will take some time.

Links

midi123 (which is being retired and merged into Benben)