Sound in MegaZeux/Sound Engines

ModObj

Mark J. Cox's ModObj was the sound engine used in MegaZeux releases prior to 2.50.

Bells, Whistles, and Sound Boards

Bells, Whistles, and Sound Boards (BWSB) is a DOS-based sound library that was popular throughout the demoscene in the mid-1990s. It was programmed by Zilym Limms and supports a small variety of sound cards such as Sound Blaster and Gravis UltraSound. The library has support for most early MOD music formats, and limited support for S3M music (after converting it to GDM format first).

BWSB was the sound library used for MegaZeux for all DOS releases from 2.50 onward (replacing ModObj). It was dropped in favor of ModPlug and MikMod (and eventually libxmp) for the SDL port.

ModPlug

libmodplug was the primary sound engine used in all port releases between 2.80 and 2.90, when it was replaced by libxmp as the default engine. It is still supported, but must be enabled with a compile-time option. Supported formats in the MegaZeux fork are MOD, S3M (faulty), XM, and IT, as well as 669, AMF, DSM, FAR, MED (limited), MTM, OKT, STM (faulty), and ULT. Notably, libmodplug has no native support for the GDM format.

MikMod

mikmod is an alternate sound engine supported by most port versions, and was the default sound engine for the GP2X port. Its support for playing mods is generally worse than ModPlug and libxmp across the board. Supported formats are MOD, S3M, XM (potentially faulty, disabled), IT, and GDM, as well as 669, AMF (potentially faulty, disabled), DSM, FAR, MED, MTM, OKT, STM, and ULT.

libxmp

libxmp is the current primary sound engine since MegaZeux 2.90b. It features wider format support than any other supported mod engine, though many loaders for extra formats and all of the depackers have been removed from MegaZeux's libxmp fork for consistency with the other engines and to reduce the executable size. Supported formats in the MegaZeux fork are MOD (including some uncommon variants), S3M, XM, IT (faulty, fixed by custom patches), and GDM, as well as 669, AMF, FAR, MED (all variants), MTM, OKT, STM, and ULT. libxmp currently has no support for DSM.

libopenmpt

MegaZeux has also optionally supported libopenmpt since 2.90b, though it has never been enabled by default and has not been forked into the MegaZeux project. It supports a wider number of formats than MegaZeux generally accepts, but these should not be relied on, as most MZX releases will not support them.