Apollo 37zz

Apollo started out as a MP3-player. It is recognized by its outstanding MP3 decoding quality, powerful continuous playback support and advanced playlist capabilities. It supports different file formats through so called input plug-ins. Writing an input plug-ins is rather straight forward (see the plug-ins page for more info) and thus Apollo can be easily made to support new audio formats.

The player routines provide continuous playback or even a crossfade between tracks on all supported formats and with all output types (standard Wave Out, DirectSound and WAV file output). It is possible to direct the output into a WAV file, thus making it possible, for instance, to decode MP3s for writing them onto a CD.

The player routines also provide a realtime 16-band equalizer for all file types. Currently Apollo ships with two input plug-ins: Apollo MPEG decoder and Apollo WAV decoder. The MPEG decoder is capable of handling both MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-2.5 audio layer 2 and 3 files (i.e. MP2- and MP3-files). The decoder is capable of producing 32-bit, 24-bit, 16-bit and 8-bit data. Also Xing and Fraunhofer VBR MP3s are supported. The MPEG decoder is generally thought to be one of the best as far as sound quality is concerned (see FAQ for more information about the quality). The WAV decoder supports RIFF WAV files containing PCM or Microsoft ADPCM coded data. Both plug-ins support Internet streaming.

Key features

Completely free of charge
Full HTML documentation
Plug-in based support for different file formats
Ships with high quality MPEG-1/2/2.5 audio layer 2/3 and RIFF WAV PCM/ADPCM decoders
Support for Winamp 2.xx plug-ins
Internet streaming
Realtime 16-band graphic equalizer for all file formats
Accurate adjustable pause between tracks (gapless play also supported)
Crossfading between tracks (also with DirectSound and WAV output)
Built-in playlist (PLS/M3U/AAP) editor with drag & drop capabilities
Apollo Advanced Playlist support
Support for ID3 and ID3v2 tags
Standard Wave Out and DirectSound support
Decode to WAV file

Languages:
English

Recent changes:
* Added three different loop modes: loop all, loop playlist, loop track * Added an option to physically delete files * Fixed window update issues with full row select * Fixed the performance issue with ID3v2 tags introduced in version 37zx * MPEG: Fixed playing files with broken or partial Xing VBR header

OS requirements for Heikki Apollo:
* OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP