MAD does not yet support MPEG-2 multichannel audio (although it should be backward compatible with such streams) nor does it currently support AAC.
MAD has the following special features:
Because MAD provides full 24-bit PCM output, applications using MAD are able to produce high quality audio. Even when the output device supports only 16-bit PCM, applications can use the extra resolution to increase the audible dynamic range through the use of dithering or noise shaping.
Because MAD uses integer computation rather than floating point, it is well suited for architectures without a floating point unit. All calculations are performed with a 32-bit fixed-point integer representation.
Because MAD is a new implementation of the ISO/IEC standards, it is unencumbered by the errors of other implementations. MAD is NOT a derivation of the ISO reference source or any other code. Considerable effort has been expended to ensure a correct implementation, even in cases where the standards are ambiguous or misleading.
Because MAD is distributed under the terms of the GPL, its redistribution is not generally restricted, so long as the terms of the GPL are followed. This means MAD can be incorporated into other software as long as that software is also distributed under the GPL. (Should this be undesirable, alternate arrangements may be possible by contacting Underbit.)
The API for libmad can be found in the mad.h header file. Note that this file is automatically generated, from the following files:
so it will not exist until after you have built the library.
There are two APIs available, one High-Level API, and the other Low-Level API. With the low-level API, each step of the decoding process must be handled explicitly, offering the greatest amount of control. With the high-level API, after callbacks are configured, a single routine will decode an entire bitstream.
If an assembly version is not available, a fast approximation version will be used. This will result in reduced accuracy of the decoder.
Alternatively, if 64-bit integers are supported as a datatype by the compiler, another version can be used that is much more accurate. However, using an assembly version is generally much faster and just as accurate.
More information can be gathered from the ` fixed.h ' header file.
MAD's CPU-intensive subband synthesis routine can be further optimized at the expense of a slight loss in output accuracy due to a modified method for fixed-point multiplication with a small windowing constant. While this is helpful for performance and the output accuracy loss is generally undetectable, it is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled.
Under some architectures, other special optimizations may also be available.
When the approximation version of the fixed-point multiply is used, MAD is a limited accuracy ISO/IEC 11172-3 audio decoder as defined by the standard.
MAD can alternatively be configured to produce output with less or more accuracy than the default, as a tradeoff with performance.
MAD produces output samples with a precision greater than 24 bits. Because most output formats use fewer bits, typically 16, it is recommended that a dithering algorithm be used (rather than rounding or truncating) to obtain the highest quality audio. However, dithering may unfavorably affect an analytic examination of the output (such as compliance testing); you may therefore wish to use rounding in this case instead.
The union initialization of ` huffman.c ' may not be portable to all platforms when GCC is not used.
The code should not be sensitive to word sizes or byte ordering, however it does assume A % B has the same sign as A.
To build libmad using Cygwin, you will first need to install the Cygwin tools:
You may then proceed with the following POSIX instructions within the Cygwin shell.
Note that by default Cygwin will build a library that depends on the Cygwin DLL. You can use MinGW to build a library that does not depend on the Cygwin DLL. To do so, give the option --host=mingw32 to ` configure '.
The specific options you may want to give ` configure ' are:
Note that you need not specify one of --enable-speed or --enable-accuracy; in its default configuration, MAD is optimized for both. You should only use one of these options if you wish to compromise speed or accuracy for the other.
By default the package will build a shared library if possible for your platform. If you want only a static library, use --disable-shared.
It is not normally necessary to use the following options, but you may fine-tune the configuration with them if desired:
By default an appropriate fixed-point assembly routine will be selected for the configured host type, if it can be determined. Thus if you are cross-compiling for another architecture, you should be sure either to give ` configure ' a host type argument (--host) or to use an explicit --enable-fpm option.
If an appropriate assembly routine cannot be determined, the default approximation version will be used. In this case, use of an alternate --enable-fpm is highly recommended.
Send inquiries, comments, bug reports, suggestions, patches, etc. to:
Underbit Technologies, Inc. <support at underbit com>
See also the MAD home page on the Web:
1.5.5