MPEGplus was a format created by the programmer Andree Buschmann. Based on the MPEG layer 2 algorithms, he tweaked the format to a point that made it the best one for mid-high bitrates, in both speed and quality.

The difference between SV(Stream Version)4 and SV5 is that SV5 allows stream lengths larger than avg. 30 minutes (a limitation in SV4).

By late 2001, the format changed name to Musepack due to potential trademark isues over the MPEG name. At about the same time Frank Klemm took over the role of main developer.

Mr. Klemm maintained the codec up to around mid-2003, and after that, reduced his participation in its development to a minimum. Even though he also released the codec sources, very little was done by third parties ever since.

Now, Musepack was indeed a great format in the late 90s and early 2000s. The competition was quite unremarkable: Ogg Vorbis was still at the beta stage, the only noteworthy publicly available AAC encoder was Psytel AAC, which was quite slow, and LAME was far from being the fast and high quality encoder it is today.

Ever since then, Vorbis reached 1.0 release status and beyond, counting on help from aoyumi's great tuning work. There is also BlackSword's ASM optimization of aoyumi's branch, turning it into a very fast encoder. LAME progressed by leaps and bounds, extracting more quality out of the MP3 format than previously thought possible. And both Nero and iTunes AAC encoders were released, bringing high quality and fast encoding to this format (at last!).

So, while Musepack lagged behind, competition quickly caught up. In that context, where Musepack is no longer the undisputed champion of quality and speed, its downsides become more preeminent: near to nonexistant portable player support, suboptimal seeking, no support for multichannel streams, no CBR support, inferior quality at low bitrates, no hability to cut and paste streams, and so on. That led former enthusiasts to abandon the format and move on to better supported, actively developed options. Today, Musepack is little more than a curiosity.

The official page is available here.

I would like to thank Francis Niechcial - Guruboolez - for contributing all the binaries here which are not credited to someone else.

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Versions by Musepack Development Team
Date: 2005-02-23
Version: 1.15u
Interface: Command line
Platform: Win32
Download: mppenc-windows-1.15u.zip - 97kB

Date: 2005-01-28
Version: 1.15t
Download: mppenc-windows-1.15t.zip - 54kB

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Versions by Frank Klemm
Date: 2003-02-19
Version: 1.15r
Download: mppenc-windows-1.15r.zip - 78kB

Date: 2003-01-27
Version: 1.15i
Download: mppenc-windows-1.15i.zip - 76kB

Date: 2002-12-18
Version: 1.15f
Download: mppenc-windows-1.15f.zip - 76kB

Date: 2002-10-26
Version: 1.14
Download: mppenc-windows-1.14.zip - 75kB

Date: 2002-10-13
Version: 1.13g
Download: mppenc-windows-1.13g.zip - 76kB

Date: 2002-10-09
Version: 1.13a
Download: mppenc-windows-1.13a.zip - 75kB

Date: 2002-10-08
Version: 1.12
Download: mppenc-windows-1.12.zip - 392kB

Date: 2002-08-26
Version: 1.11b
Download: mppenc-windows-1.11b.zip - 72kB

Date: 2002-08-26
Version: 1.11a
Download: mppenc-windows-1.11a.zip - 393kB

Date: 2002-07-31
Version: 1.1
Download: mppenc-windows-1.1.zip - 396kB

Date: 2002-07-08
Version: 1.06
Download: mppenc-windows-1.06.zip - 399kB

Date: 2002-07-02
Version: 1.05z3
Download: mppenc-windows-1.05z3.zip - 395kB

Date: 2002-06-28
Version: 1.05z2
Download: mppenc-windows-1.05z2.zip - 182kB

Date: 2002-06-27
Version: 1.05z1
Download: mppenc-windows-1.05z1.zip - 208kB

Date: 2002-05-27
Version: 1.04
Download: mppenc-windows-1.04.zip - 379kB

Date: 2002-05-13
Version: 1.02
Download: mppenc-windows-1.02.zip - 375kB

Date: 2002-05-04
Version: 1.01j
Download: mppenc-windows-1.01j.zip - 370kB

Date: 2002-03-26
Version: 1.0
Download: mppenc-windows-1.0.zip - 381kB

Date: 2002-01-11
Version: 0.90s
Download: mppenc-windows-0.90s.zip - 162kB

Date: 2001-12-18
Version: 0.90o
Download: mppenc-windows-0.90o.zip - 161kB

Date: 2001-12-12
Version: 0.90m
Download: mppenc-windows-0.90m.zip - 159kB

Date: 2001-11-26
Version: 0.90k
Download: mppenc-windows-0.90k.zip - 69kB

Date: 2001-11-14
Version: 0.90i
Download: mppenc-windows-0.90i.zip - 138kB

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Versions by Andree Buschmann
Date: 2001-07-10
Version: 1.7.9c
Download: mppenc_1_7_9c.zip - 78kB

Date: 2001-05-06
Version: 1.7.9a
Download: mppenc_1_7_9a.zip - 78kB

Date: 2001-04-03
Version: 1.7.9
Download: mppenc_1_7_9.zip - 77kB

Date: 2000-11-24
Version: 1.7.8
Download: mppenc_1_7_8.zip - 73kB

Date: 2000-07-05
Version: N/A (SV5)
Download: mppsv5.zip - 68kB
Found by Roberto Amorim

Date: 2000-01-06
Version: N/A (SV4)
Download: mppsv4.zip - 63kB
SV4 encoder kindly contributed by Filburt (Adam)

Date: 2000-06-18
Version: N/A (SV5) - Decoder
Download: mppdec.zip - 50kB
Found by Roberto Amorim

Date: 2000-06-22
Version: N/A (SV5)
Interface: Decoding library
Platform: Win32
Download: mpplib.zip - 33kB
SV5 apps kindly contributed by Sebastian Knop