Musepack

Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+. Development of MPC was initiated in 1997 by Andree Buschmann and later assumed by Frank Klemm, and as of 2004 is maintained by the Musepack Development Team (MDT) with assistance from Buschmann and Klemm. Encoders and decoders are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows; and plugins for several third-party media players are available from the Musepack website, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or BSD licenses, and an extensive list of programs supporting the format.

Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+. Development of MPC was initiated in 1997 by Andree Buschmann and later assumed by Frank Klemm, and as of 2004 is maintained by the Musepack Development Team (MDT) with assistance from Buschmann and Klemm. Encoders and decoders are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows; and plugins for several third-party media players are available from the Musepack website, licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or BSD licenses, and an extensive list of programs supporting the format. == Test results== Despite being optimized for 100% transparency at moderately high bitrates, MPC has also scored highly on many 128 kbit/s tests. In May 2004, a series of double-blind listening tests (as reported on Slashdot ) suggested that Musepack and Ogg Vorbis (which was the 1.1 "aoTuV" fork at the time) were the two best available codecs for high-quality audio compression at bitrates around 128 kbit/s, beating MP3, AAC, WMA, and ATRAC. Listening tests of MPC: 2005 – 180 kbit/s blind listening comparison between AAC, MP3, Musepack and Vorbis on classic music samples – MPC is second after Vorbis aoTuV. 2004 – rjamorim's second 128 kbit/s group listening test – between 14 and 27 listeners. MPC and Vorbis tied for first. 2003 – rjamorim's first 128 kbit/s group listening test – between 14 and 29 listeners. AAC, MPC, Vorbis, and WMA tied for first. 2002 – ff123's second 128 kbit/s group listening test 2001 – ff123's 128 kbit/s group listening test ==Hardware and software support== Devices supporting The Core Pocket Media Player can play MPC. This includes devices running Palm OS, Symbian OS, Windows, Windows CE and Windows Mobile (Pocket PC). All devices with software audio decoding that are supported by Rockbox, including older revisions of iPod, can also play Musepack files. Playback on Roku Photobridge HD is supported with a plugin. There is a plethora of media players for Android supporting Musepack (among them is the ported Rockbox media player). Musepack distributes the libmpcdec library for decoding MPC content. Various plugins have been developed, using that library, including for the XMMS player (on Unix). Asunder and Jack! The Knife allows ripping Audio CD tracks directly into Musepack files. ==References== Software supporting Musepack Hydrogen Audio Wiki's article on Musepack

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