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Did a search for this, found nothing so I figured I'd give it a try. Is it possible to get "Monkey's Audio" portable?
The software appears to licensed as open-source...
"Freely available source code, simple SDK and non-restrictive licensing - other developers can easily use Monkey's Audio in their own programs -- and there are no evil restrictive licensing agreements" quoted from www.monkeysaudio.com.
TIA.
It's not open source. It's a proprietary format and it's proprietary software. There is source code available for the SDK, but it's under a proprietary license (not OSI approved).
This is why FLAC is far more popular and more widely supported. FLAC is also already portable, though I can post a PAF of it if anybody is interested.
As I just downloaded a bunch of open-source codecs last night, actually my first time trying ogg and LAME, I also tried FLAC, and the FLAC Frontend, it's very handy and easy to use. I would be interested.
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It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...
This would be an interesting app to have. Not sure how much I would use it, but the option would be nice.
Oh...and options, everyone loves options too.
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It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...
I don't see why it would write to the registry or %appdata% since there are no settings to be saved (options are given for every action). The frontend may or may not be portable, but I don't see why the backend wouldn't be portable.
I use Monkey's Audio over FLAC since it gets better compression. I do support FLAC, though, and I hope that it sees more action (like support in certain hardware). I hope Matthew Ashland (Monkey's Audio creator) can be convinced to go open-source. He says (according to the MA help files) that the only reason he won't do it is because he feels it's too much work to explain things to others.
Average compression ratio is quite close. The numbers on MA's site are really outdated (they use FLAC 0.1). The more recent comparison on FLAC's site yields a more accurate picture. Compressing 77 minutes of a variety of music yielded:
Monkey's Audio 3.99 (high): Avg compression ratio of 51.5% taking 15:45.41 to encode
Monkey's Audio 3.99 (fast): Avg compression ratio of 53.1% taking 10:32.11 to encode
FLAC (default): Avg compression ratio of 53.7% taking 10:19.61 to encode
So, you can get equivalent compression with FLAC default and Monkey's Audio on fastest... or you can get a slighty higher compression ratio (~2%) with Monkey's Audio on high but it'll take over 50% longer to encode.
The downsides on the Monkey's Audio don't end with the longer encode, though. Decoding a Monkey's Audio file compressed with the fast setting takes twice the CPU power of decoding a FLAC file. Decoding a Monkey's Audio file compressed with the high setting takes three times the CPU power of decoding a FLAC file. That plus the licensing issue is why no hardware supports MA but lots of it supports FLAC (like Squeezebox, Sonos, PhatBox, Kenwood MusicKeg, iAudio, ReQuest, Olive, Escient, TrekStor, and more). The licensing issue is also why so many software programs support FLAC (XMMS, Winamp, AlsaPlayer, Y! Music Engine, MacAmp Lite, dBpowerAMP, Foobar2000, QCD, Apollo and more.)
Personally, I don't think the positives (~2% better compression) outweigh the negatives (longer encode time, higher CPU use when playing, less software/hardware support).
Now that is breaking it down. Little bored last night John? 
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The numbers on MA's site are really outdated
Irrelevant, since I compared them using my music and the latest version of each (MA 4.01 and FLAC 1.20).
The more recent comparison on FLAC's site yields a more accurate picture.
More accurate, but not the most accurate. They're using MA 3.99, not the newest release (which is a major one).
Consistently, I got significantly better compression with MA (not just ~2%), and while MA did take longer, it was not very significant (I'm using a pretty low-end machine to boot). MA on extra high has a better compression ratio than FLAC's highest setting. I have only noticed any decoding speed difference with MA's insane setting, which I have decided not to use since decoding time is significantly longer than any other setting (FLAC or MA). FLAC is meant for speed, MA is meant for brute compression. Like I said, I hope to see more of FLAC in hardware in audio devices (which wouldn't be able to handle the power needs of MA). On hardware that can easily handle MA, I use it, even if it may not be as efficient.
If you still don't believe me, I can give you results for all of my music.
In running a few tests of my own, I found the differences to be about the same with MA 4.01 and FLAC 1.2. I compared the defaults (Normal with MA and 6 with FLAC) and still got only about a 2% difference in file size with roughly equivalent encoding times. Comparing Extra High in MA with 8 in FLAC yielded similar results. I didn't include the Insane level in MA since it takes WAY too long to encode.
Granted, I listen to mostly electronica, so your music choice may yield different results. But a typical head to head is:
Original File Size: 66.6MB (uncompressed wav)
Monkey's Audio 4.01 (Very High): 61.0%
FLAC 1.20 (Level 8 ): 63.6%
This was using "Beanfield - Tide featuring Bajka (Carl Cox Mix)" from Sasha - Fundacion NYC.
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