Sound in MegaZeux/Sound Engines

ModObj

Mark J. Cox's ModObj was the sound engine used in MegaZeux releases prior to 2.50.

Supported Formats

• MOD
• SAM (sound effects only)

Bells, Whistles, and Sound Boards

Bells, Whistles, and Sound Boards (BWSB) is a DOS-based sound library that was popular throughout the demoscene in the mid-1990s. It was programmed by Zilym Limms and supports a small variety of sound cards such as Sound Blaster and Gravis UltraSound.

BWSB was the sound library used for MegaZeux for all DOS releases from 2.50 onward (replacing ModObj). It was dropped in favor of ModPlug and MikMod (and eventually libxmp) for the SDL port.

Supported Formats

• MOD (most early variants)
• GDM (a utility for converting S3Ms to GDMs was provided)
• SAM (sound effects only)

ModPlug

libmodplug was the primary sound engine used in all port releases between 2.80 and 2.90, when it was replaced by libxmp as the default engine. It is still supported, but must be enabled with a compile-time option.

Supported Formats

The MegaZeux fork of libmodplug disables or ignores any formats not featured in this list.

• MOD
• S3M (faulty)
• XM
• IT
• 669
• AMF
• DSM
• FAR
• MED (limited)
• MTM
• OKT
• STM (faulty)
• ULT

libmodplug supports GDM through conversion to S3M. This conversion process is only enabled for MegaZeux builds with libmodplug, and is known to sometimes produce faulty S3Ms.

MikMod

mikmod is an alternate sound engine available in port versions, and was the default sound engine for the GP2X port. Its support for playing mods is generally worse than ModPlug and libxmp across the board.

Supported Formats

MegaZeux support for MikMod ignores any formats not featured in this list.

• MOD
• S3M
• XM (potentially faulty, disabled)
• IT
• GDM
• 669
• AMF (potentially faulty, disabled)
• DSM
• FAR
• MED
• MTM
• OKT
• STM
• ULT

libxmp

libxmp is the current primary sound engine since MegaZeux 2.90b. It features wider format support than any other supported mod engine, though many loaders for extra formats and all of the depackers have been removed from MegaZeux's libxmp fork for consistency with the other engines (and to reduce the executable size).

Supported Formats

The MegaZeux fork of libxmp disables and/or ignores many format loaders not included in this list.

• MOD (including some uncommon variants)
• S3M
• XM
• IT (faulty, but fixed by custom patches)
• GDM
• 669
• AMF
• FAR
• MED (all variants)
• MTM
• OKT
• STM
• ULT

libxmp currently has no support for DSM.

libopenmpt

MegaZeux has also optionally supported libopenmpt since 2.90b, though it has never been enabled by default and has not been forked into the MegaZeux project.