mpg123

mpg123 is a free software cross-platform command-line MPEG audio player whose library, libmpg123, is noted for its speed at decompressing MPEG audio files. As the name suggests, it supports MPEG-1 and -2, layers 1, 2, and 3. Its most common use is to play MP3 files. mpg123 makes use of hand-written assembly optimizations which use SIMD instructions to perform the iDCT part of the MPEG decoding quicker than any other MP3 player. This makes it probably the most resource-efficient MP3 player and library there is. libmpg123 is used by XMMS for MP3 playback and can also be used in Winamp through the use of a plugin. The last stable version (0.59r) produced by the original authors, Michael Hipp and Oliver Fromme, dated 19 June 1999, was licensed under a non-commercial, no-derivative proprietary software license, although the source code was available. The official development of mpg123 and its library, mpglib, had ceased for several years, and as some serious security holes emerged, patches were submitted by third party developers for the Debian and Gentoo Linux packages, as well as the FreeBSD ports collection.