As an exercise to myself, I would like to write a simple command-line music player in FASM. The easiest way would probably be to just add the BASS DLLs and invoke their methods, but that would require serving a whole folder full of extra DLL files which would somehow invalidate my choice to keep it small.

Is there a "linkable", compact audio library with similar features available?

Look at minifmod

Is there a website for that? fmod.org doesn't seem to have it.

MiniFMOD seems to have disappeared without a trace.

This thread on Pouet <http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=3372&page=1> points out an alternative called uFMOD here <http://ufmod.sourceforge.net/>, but it only appears to play XM mods, and I'm not sure if that's what you want.

I don't actually have MOD files.
I guess it's BASS then. Thank you though!

Since you seem to write a Windows application anyway, why not just use something like DirectShow? It actually requires the library being installed to the system, but AFAIR it’s a part of Windows SDK (not DirectX SDK) for quite a long time yet. It is installed on most computers anyway. Allows playing anything you have codecs installed for, including even videos (may even create a simple video window for you).

I got a 6 KB program easily that shows a windows with progress bar while playing a file specified in the command line. I guess, 8 KB might even let you change playing position and manage simple playlists. And you might want to pack the executable to make it even smaller.

So what about the others?

Also, at least on my machine, the number of installed codecs is usually rather low. I'd have to install a number of codecs then - is that easier? (Or am I just looking in the wrong place?)

6 KB sounds nice though.

If you are thinking about mod files, maybe MCI is not for you.

Some time ago I wrote an unfinished but working multimedia player in FASM that can reproduce everything what is able to play the MCI-win-api: sound and video with codecs. It uses the FFT algorithm for the spectrum bars, but you have to turn on the wave-in audio to make it work. In 13 Kb.

Some time ago I started to program in DirectSound, but I stopped due of lack of time. Maybe this is the right way to play mod files.

No, I actually want to play music (FLAC, MP3, Vorbis).

In that case, maybe MCI is for you

What's MCI now?

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd757151(v=vs.85).aspx

An small fasm sample

Thank you. I just tested it: My Vorbis files don't seem to work even in the "All Files" filter. Which file types are supported by MCI?

-edit- Found it: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI Extensions.
Looks like OGG isn't supported, so I'd have to require additional software again.

Sigh.

If you don’t have the codecs installed, you will need to either include them with your program or write your own ones, possibly as part of your program. It doesn’t really matter how you implement this: you still have to include instructions to decompress the source data into raw sound data, either in the form of separate codecs (3rd party or your own) or modules of your own application.

The whole purpose of codecs is to make it easier for audio/video players to support new multimedia formats by separating the UI from the algorithms behind different formats.

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BTW, AFAIK MCI still uses the concept of codecs and relies on them being installed. Besides, it has been deprecated by Microsoft since 1999 (http://xtras.tabuleiro.com/support/technotes/general/gn001.htm). It (as well as VfW) predates DirectShow, and even DirectShow is considered outdated by now, MS recommends to use something called Windows Media Foundation instead.

The problem with Media Foundation though is that it is not supported by WinXP– versions of Windows.

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<offtop>The player I’ve mentioned was one of the programs I wrote as examples for my students. You may find it (as well as a simple virtual piano) here: http://lessthan.16mb.com/ Source codes are also available on demand, but they were written in a hurry and thus are quite “dirty” so I decided not to share them in public.</offtop>

I don't have Windows XP and I don't plan to make my software compatible with it.
But WMF requires additional codecs for (e.g.) FLAC again. Microsoft should really consider to develop their own ones.



Including them provides no advantage over using BASS again; and (given that I plan to distribute the files one day) I'm not really a fan of "please install these 3525 extra packages before you can use my super-small software". Polluting computers with dependencies is a quite bad idea.

I briefly looked at your player. Nice.

In fact you didn’t have to install any of them to run my sample program, right?

Anyway, I just wanted to pay your attention to the fact that Windows version of BASS still requires DirectX being installed. But it still has its own advantages over DirectShow.

Your sample program has a small selection of supported codecs, right?

I don't plan to make my application compatible with old Windows versions. New ones come with DirectX preinstalled...