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Zeugma440 edited this page Jun 13, 2017 · 13 revisions

Audio Tools Library (ATL) for .NET

What is ATL .NET ?

Audio Tools Library .NET is the C# port of the original ATL, written in Pascal by the MAC Team (Jürgen Faul, Gambit and contributors).

It is aimed at giving C# developers a native, portable and easy-to-use library to access and read data from various digital audio formats.

As a showcase, I have used ATL.NET as a cornerstone to build Ethos Cataloger, a digital music cataloging software written entirely in C#.

What is NOT ATL .NET ?

Audio Tools Library .NET is not :

  • a standalone application : it is a library aimed at being used by developers to build software
  • an audio file tagger : it only reads data NB : I'm currently playing with experimental classes aimed at securely creating, editing and removing metadata (tags). It might take some time to stabilize, since altering audio files needs thorough testing
  • an audio music player : it gives access to various properties and metadata (see below for the comprehensive list), but does not process audio data into an audible signal

Why open source ?

ATL has been open source since its creation. The ATL 2.3 source written in Pascal language is still out there on Sourceforge !

By publicly sharing the result of their work, the MAC team has helped many developers to gain tremendous time in creating audio tools.

As a fellow audiophile and developer, I'm proudly extending and improving their initial contribution to the open source community.

Why would I want to use ATL while TagLib is out there ?

  • ATL is a fully native C# implementation, which makes portability trivial if your app is already based on .NET or Mono frameworks

  • ATL features a flexible logging system which allows you to catch and record audio file reading/writing incidents into your app

  • ATL features Playlists and Cuesheets readers

How to use it ? Which platforms and .NET/Mono versions does ATL run on ?

Please refer to the Code snippets section of the Documentation

What kind of data can ATL actually read ? From which formats ?

  • Supported audio formats and tagging standards : NB1 : Empty cells mean "not applicable for this audio format" NB2 : All metadata is read according to Unicode/UTF-8 encoding when applicable, which means any "foreign" character (japanese, chinese, cyrillic...) will be recognized and displayed properly

|Audio format|Extensions|ID3v1.0-1.1 support|ID3v2.2-2.4 support|APEtag 1.0-2.0 support|Format-specific tagging support| |Advanced Audio Coding, Apple Lossless (ALAC)|.AAC, .MP4, .M4A|yes|yes|yes|yes| |Audio Interchange File Format|.AIF, .AIFF, .AIFC| |yes| |yes| |Digital Theatre System|.DTS| | | | | |Direct Stream Digital|.DSD, .DSF| |yes | | | |Dolby Digital|.AC3| | |yes| | |Extended Module|.XM| | | |yes (2)| |Free Lossless Audio Codec|.FLAC| |yes| |yes| |Impulse Tracker|.IT| | | |yes (2)| |Musical Instruments Digital Interface|.MID, .MIDI| | | |yes (1)| |Monkey's Audio|.APE|yes|yes|yes| | |MPEG Audio Layer|.MP1, .MP2, .MP3|yes|yes|yes| | |MusePack / MPEGplus|.MPC, .MP+|yes|yes|yes| | |Noisetracker/Soundtracker/Protracker|.MOD| | | |yes (2)| |OGG : Vorbis, Opus|.OGG, .OPUS| | | |yes| |OptimFROG|.OFR, .OFS|yes|yes|yes| | |Portable Sound Format|.PSF, .PSF1, .PSF2, .MINIPSF, .MINIPSF1, .MINIPSF2, .SSF, .MINISSF, .DSF, .MINIDSF, .GSF, .MINIGSF, .QSF, .MINISQF| | | |yes| |ScreamTracker|.S3M| | | |yes (2)| |SPC700 (Super Nintendo Sound files)|.SPC| | | |yes| |Toms' losslesss Audio Kompressor|.TAK| | |yes| | |True Audio|.TTA|yes|yes|yes| | |TwinVQ|.VQF| | | |yes| |PCM (uncompressed audio)|.WAV|yes| | | | |WavPack|.WV| | |yes| | |Windows Media Audio|.WMA| | | |yes| (1) : MIDI meta events are all written to the track's Comment field (2) : sample names are all written to the track's Comment field

  • Detected fields

    • Audio data (from audio data) : Bitrate, Duration, VBR, Codec family
    • Metadata (from tags) : Title, Artist, Composer, Comment, Genre, Track number, Disc number, Year, Album, Rating, Embedded pictures

  • Supported playlists formats : ASX, B4S, FPL (experimental), M3U, M3U8, PLS, SMIL (including WPL and ZPL), XSPF

  • Supported Cuesheets formats : CUE

What is the roadmap of ATL.NET ?

  • Being able to create, edit and remove metadata (tags)
  • Support for more video game-specific music formats (.GYM, .VGM)
  • Connectors to other library file formats (iTunes)

Does ATL.NET include code authored by other people ?

ATL.NET is based on :

  • Audio Tools Library 2.3 by Jurgen Faul, Mattias Dahlberg, Gambit, MaDah and Erik Stenborg (code ported from Pascal to C# and refactored)

  • MIDI class 1.5 by Valentin Schmidt & Michael Mlivoncic (code ported from PHP to C# and refactored)

  • CueSharp 0.5 by Wyatt O'Day (original C# class wrapped in CatalogDataReaders)

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