Firewing 64 by Besus A 3D platforming game set in the style of a Nintendo 64 title. You control Firewing, a dragon tasked with collecting all of the Peace Crystal fragments. To do so will require exploration, collectibles, mini-games, and of course, platforming! Mac OS X is a Unix-like operating system developed by Apple for their Mac hardware line. Windows is a series of operating systems, running their own proprietary kernel, that is developed by Microsoft and licensed to various computer manufacturers.
LoudMax is a Look-Ahead Brickwall Loudness Maximizer Plugin with a clean transparent sound. It is designed to retain the original character of the music as much as possible even at high compression levels.
Downloads:
VST Plugin v1.38 for Windows PC 32/64bit
AU/VST Plugins v1.38 for Mac published by PlugInGuru
AU/VST Plugins v1.38 for older Mac OS X 32/64bit (OS 10.5 - 10.14)
LADSPA Plugin v1.38 for Linux x86 32/64bit
Winamp Plugin v1.38
Additional Releases:
GUI-less VST Plugin v1.38 for Windows PC 32/64bit
Winamp Plugin v1.38 32/64bit (zipped dll)
Please note the disclaimer on the right!
Release notes v1.38:
LoudMax is available as VST 2.4 Plugin for Windows and Mac OS X, Audio Unit Plugin for Mac OS X, LADSPA Plugin for Linux x86 and as Winamp Plugin.
A SSE2-capable CPU is necessary (Pentium 4 / AMD Athlon 64 or newer).
The Mac OS X Plugins are 'Universal Binaries' with support for Intel Mac.
The Audio Unit version was built with Symbiosis from NuEdge Development.
The version for MAC OS Catalina was created with the friendly support of the guys from PlugInGuru.
For the users of older MAC OS a legacy version is available.
The Linux Plugin has no meters since LADSPA doesn´t support a custom GUI. But it supports 5.1 surround modes. See README file in the LADSPA zip package for further informations.
The Winamp Plugin also supports 5.1 surround. Built-in stereo overdrive protection avoids distortions in a subsequent stereo downmix.
The Winamp Plugin has a simplified user interface. Only one slider for adjusting the maximum amplification. The maximum output level is 0dB.
The GUI was designed by LimeFlavour based on the idea and colorscheme of Sinkmusic.
Thanks to Hannes Druener for using his MacBook and testing.
Thanks to PlugInGuru for hosting the MAC files.
Inter-Sample Peak Detection:
The higher the frequency, the greater the probability that the true peak will be between two digital audio samples. These true peak overshoots can be up to 3 dB for proper band-limited audio and even much more for pathological signals. This can become a problem not only with poor D/A converters, but also with subsequent sample rate conversions, e.g. from 44.1 to 48 kHz or vice versa, and the use of audio compression such as MP3 or AAC.
For more information see the 'Tutorials' section.
When ISP is turned on, four additional samples are calculated between every two samples present. This reduces true peak overshoots for proper band-limited audio to 0.2 dB and for pathological signals to 0.5 dB.
ITU-R BS.1770: There are coefficients given in this recommendation for the calculation of inter-sample peaks. Unfortunately these coefficients do not seem to be optimal for limiters. They have a negative effect on transients and lead to high overshoots in true peak meters that use higher quality upsampling. Therefore LoudMax uses optimized coefficients that do not affect transients and reduce the overshoots to similar values with all true peak meters tested. The downside is that BS.1770 calibrated true peak meters will also detect overshoots of up to 0.2 dB with LoudMax ISP detection. So if you need to guarantee a true peak level of -1.0 dB for example, set the output level to -1.2 dB or even -1.5 dB.
Using ISP will double the CPU utilization and increase latency by 6 samples.
LoudMax changes the latency dynamically when ISP is switched. Note that most hosts do not adjust latency compensation while playing, but at the next stop/start.
Editor’s Note: Our ongoing preview of the announced features in OS X 10.5 continues, with this profile of Leopard’s enhanced support for 64-bit computing.
Full 64-bit support got top billing in Steve Jobs’ Worldwide Developers Conference keynote —it was first on the list of Leopard enhancements he previewed, ahead even of Apple’s striking Time Machine backup-and-restore technology. Even at a developer conference, however, 64-bit support was an odd choice for the lead-off position, because it’s an option even Apple admits doesn’t yet make sense for most applications.
If you’re writing an application that requires truly huge amounts of memory (more than 4GB) or needs random access within data sets larger than 2GB (as opposed to, for example, video-editing apps that read and write very large files but work with only a subset at any one time), it’s convenient to deal with 64 bits of data at time, rather than the 32-bit chunks that most of today’s Mac (and Windows) applications use. Apple has for years offered developers some ways to work with 64-bit data, but those involved working around the fact that the Mac OS and most of the hardware it ran on were basically a 32-bit environment
In recent years, however, the company has gradually added some direct 64-bit support to its products: the PowerPC G5 processor, for example, was designed to handle 64-as well as 32-bit code, and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) allows developers to create fully 64-bit command-line or background applications, though not 64-bit programs with their own graphical interface.
Things will be different in Leopard: Developers can now build full-fledged Mac apps that are 64-bit-capable. But developers converting existing Mac programs will face a fair bit of work. Not only their own code, but every library, framework, and plug-in their programs use will have to be modified and recompiled.
Even then, there’s not always a clear-cut case to move to 64 bits. First, 64-bit code will work only on G5 or Core 2 processors—developers will still have to deliver 32-bit versions for users with Macs based on G3 and G4 PowerPCs or even with Intel’s first-generation Core Duo and Core Solo CPUs (in other words, the current MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini product lines).
Second, some 64-bit programs will actually perform more slowly than 32-bit equivalents, particularly on G5 Macs. Although most applications are likely to pick up some performance by going 64-bit, the benefits are not likely to be overwhelming, even on the new Mac Pro and future models with Core 2 processors. The main problem is that going from 32- to 64-bits results in inflated code, which means less of it fits in the processor’s L1 and L2 caches, and more relatively slow calls to memory are required.
Developers of certain types of programs that work with huge amounts of data—some scientific computing applications, large database and data-mining systems, large-scale CAD/CAM apps, and specialized image processing programs, to name a few—will appreciate Leopard’s full, native support for 64-bit computing, especially if they are creating new applications from scratch and if they are targeting only future Core 2 CPUs, leaving PowerPC and first-generation Core users behind.
In a decade or two, 32-bit computing may only be a distant memory, and the Mac OS (or whatever succeeds it) and the hardware it runs on will be fully optimized for 64-bit operation. By then, in hindsight, the addition of 64-bit application support in Leopard will look like a milestone on an important evolutionary path. But in the near term, it’s mostly of interest to developers of specialized technical applications. For most Mac fans—even graphics professionals and other power users—this is one leap forward that’s not likely to produce much of a splash when Leopard is unleashed next spring.
[ Henry Norr is a former editor of MacWeek and a former technology columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle .]