Installing Multiple Apps to a Common Directory

[KyleHx]

It has becomre quite tedious copying & checking for duplicates & versions between multiple apps that share the same plugins/addons.
I'm thinking of installing them all to a single AV directory.

This would mean that MB & WinAmp & Foobar2000,
plus LAME (3.99.5) & WinAmp-Essentials & Windows-Essentials-Codec-Pack,
would all necesarily be using the same support files, and I have a single place to look for update/configuration work.

Does anyone forsee problems with this approach?

[Zak]

What plugins/addons are you sharing between all three apps?

The only common files I can think of would be the command line encoders (flac.exe, lame.exe, oggenc.exe etc.). As long as you can specify the path to each program and the parameters used for conversion you should be able to use the same copy of each encoder. That would only be useful if you were using all three programs to convert files to those formats at different times.

Each program uses different files for decoding (i.e. playback) - MusicBee uses the BASS audio library, Winamp has its own input plugins (filenames starting with "in_" from memory) and I'm pretty sure Foobar uses something else again. There's no way to avoid having separate copies of those.

Unless you know you have a specific need for them, you shouldn't need to install codec packs either. Popular video players like VLC or PotPlayer have support for every common codec built-in, and I not sure Winamp, MusicBee or Foobar will use them at all. Happy to be corrected, but the need for all-in-one codec packs are thankfully a thing of the past.

[KyleHx]

This grew out of the process that generated this list (from Tip & Tricks)


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for >> Edit | Preferences | File Converters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) LAME (for MP3)
   download:   http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lame_Encoder.htm
    version:   3.99.5

   --- copy lame.exe & lame_enc.dll to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

2) AAC (NeroAACCodec - for AAC/MPeg)
   download:   http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-nerodigital-nero-aac-codec.php
    version:    1.5.1

    --- copy .exes (neroAacDec & neroAacEnc & neroAacTag) to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

4) OGG-Vorbis
   download:   http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.php
    version:   oggenc2.87-1.3.5-generic [2015-03-19].zip

   --- copy oggenc2.exe to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

5) OPUS
   download:   http://opus-codec.org/downloads/
    version:   opus-tools-0.1.9-win32.zip

   --- copy .exe's (opusenc & opusdec & opusinfo) to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

6) MPC
   download:   http://files.musepack.net/windows/musepack_windows_2009-04-02.zip
    version:   1.30.0

   --- copy mpcenc.exe to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

7) Flac
   download:   http://xiph.org/
    version:   FLAC 1.3.1 (25-Nov-2014)

   --- copy flac.exe to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

ALAC (Zeranoe FFmpeg) = high-res .m4a (like diff between .mp3 & VBRV0)
   download:   http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
    version:   ffmpeg-20150502-git-6197672-win32-static.7z

   --- copy ..\bin .exe's (ffmpeg & ffplay & ffprobe) to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec
   --- activate in MusicBee - Edit > Preferences > File Converters and tick ALAC-Enabled

9) WavPack
   download:   http://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html
    version:   4.70.0

   --- copy WavPack.exe to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

X) TAK (Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor)
   download:   http://thbeck.de/Download/TAK_2.3.0.zip
    version:   2.3.0

   --- copy TakC.exe to C:\Program Files\MusicBee\Codec

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