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Strratus is a win32 based application and was coded in Borland Delphi. It is an Audio Player for that has been made as user friendly as possible , and has a quick easy to use and in your face type of an interface. It supports a multitude of audio formats and has the latest Bass Audio Engine (Drivers) to give you that crisp and clear sound.         

It is loaded with real cool features like

• A 10 band equalizer
• Advanced ID tag reader that supports Flac,Mpeg(mp1,mp2,mp3..),Wma ,Ogg etc
• Time of every song displayed in playlist
• Advanced scroll (automatic jumping)
• Extreme Beta Testing to keep it bug free
• DirectX 8.1 effects like flanger,echo and reverb
• Loads of available plugins (winamp 2 plugins are compatible)
• Repeat and shuffling (Musicmatch Jukebox style) of playlist
• Saving and loading of playlists (Pls & M3u)
• WMA 9 Support
• Mp3pro Support
• ID3 V2 tag is given higher priority so that you get the latest tag information displayed
• PLS And M3U playlist saving and loading supported too
• Supports Drag And Drop From Windows
• Open Dialog Filter updates itself depending on the current plugins.
• Use the OS themes to give the user a consistent interface

This piece of software has basically been developed to provide an alternative to the heavy and memory hogging audio players of today (Winamp5 ,Sonique ,Windows Media Player ,MusicMatchJB).It is also an attempt to fill in the void created by the absence of a real light feature and power packed audio player (Though I am still a big fan of winamp2 classic).

Strratus is an audio player that is capable of playing numerous audio formats like mp3,wma,wma9,wav on its own and other formats like aac (advanced audio coding),mp4,flac,asf,ogg etc with the help of plugins. It is supposed to be a simple easy to use WYSIWYG audio player for the masses, it is not meant to and probably never will challenge the likes of winamp ,sonique ,realplayer etc but is surely an enjoyable experience for a newbie or advanced user of  media jukeboxes alike.

• Now the integrated environment means that one can use Strratus to play files of various formats in a playlist seamlessly. 
• It can be used to play Mpeg(Mp1,Mp2,Mp3) ,Ogg Vorbis ,Flac ,Wave ,Wma (Windows Media Audio) ,Mp3pro ,AAC ,Midis ,Mp4 ,M4a ,Asf ,RMI (Real media), APE (Monkeys Audio)
• The DirectX Sound Effects Flanger ,Reverb ,Echo and the 10 band equalizer helps create customized sound
• File Associations help load the file directly into its interface.
• Can be used on Multiple Platforms(Win9x,Win ME,Win2000,Win Xp Home/Prof)

 The Form hierarchy is as follows

  Main Form 

• The one having the sliders and the standard audio control buttons is the main form. Here buttons provided are play ,stop ,pause ,next ,previous ,open ,add ,playlist toggle ,equalizer toggle and the repeat checkbox.
• Repeat will continue with the first song when the last song in the playlist is done playing.
• The Menu in this form has options galore and all features are singly accessible via this menu
• The display panel gives detailed information about the song currently playing by analyzing the file as well as reading its tag.
• The track slider allows you to adjust the current track position.
• The slider on the right is the volume slider
• The current track time is displayed on the upper left part of the form

  Equalizer

• All the 10 Sliders can be adjusted to change the sound effect
• Additional DirectX effects echo ,flanger ,reverb also provided here
• Inbuilt Equalizer presets can be accessed by hitting the preset button

  Playlist 

• The Playlist is where all the action takes place ,you can add open files as well as playlists here.
• Other playlist related tasks like deleting ,cropping etc are also done here.
• Hitting the Enter key will play the current selected song and the arrow keys can be used to browse through the playlist.
• One can also shuffle ,save and load playlists out here

  Preferences 

• Here one can decide which plugin to use or just use the essential set set it to default
• The playlist can be displayed in a variety of formats and you can decide the format right here e.g. [Artist] \ [Title] will display the song in the playlist as Bon Jovi \ Bed Of Roses
• You can also decide whether to number songs in a playlist or not by using the checkbox
• Smooth Shuffle is when Strratus waits for the current song to get over before playing the first song in the new shuffle order whereas shuffle and go will directly play the first song after shuffling 

The various components that are bound together ,the hierarchy looks somewhat like this

Thus desirable audio output and song info is achieved by synchronizing the working of various components.

• This entire application was initially coded in Delphi 6 Personal Edition and later ,the entire code was made compatible with Delphi 7 enterprise edition ,then onwards was coded in Delphi 7
• Language Used is Object Pascal.
• Platforms Supported are Win9x, Windows Me, Windows 2000 And Windows Xp.
• Tested Only On Windows 98,Windows 2000 and Windows Xp professional.

 What is Delphi?

• Delphi is a high-level, compiled, strongly typed language that supports structured and object-oriented design. Based on Object Pascal, its benefits include easy-to-read code, quick compilation, and the use of multiple unit files for modular programming.
   
• Delphi has special features that support Borland's component framework and RAD (Rapid Application Development) environment.
   

 Screenshot 1. Main form with equalizer and playlist

 Screenshot 2. Preferences>Plugin Selections

 Screenshot 3. Preferences>Playlist Configurations

 Screenshot 4. Preferences>File Associations

All screenshots taken using Windows XP, Longhorn Transformation Pack 6, Longhorn Aero Theme ,AMD 1900+.

• Requires Directx 8.1 or later version to work efficiently, especially the FX Effects
• Crashes if Audio Drivers are missing or corrupted.
• Requires Webdings Font comes with  IE 6 and later versions.
• Minimum: 32 Mb Ram, PII Processor 350 MHz ,Win 98 (may work with Win95).
• Recommended Use: On 128 Mb Ram, P IV or Amd 2200+ Processors with Windows Xp. (For God Speed)
   

       Additions In Version 0.83 Manthan Build

• Changed Interface to make it compatible with Longhorn transformation and Windows Xp themes (Decreased column width of first column in playlist ,scrollbar flat to beveled etc)
• Changed the about box
• Added pictures to file associations selections form
• Debugged open dialog error
• Removed Equalizer form stickiness

      Additions In Version 0.82 Beta 

• Sticky Windows (Not In XP)
• File Associations Done (Took A While!!)
• User can choose if he wants to number items the playlist or not.
• Times aligned at right side of the playlist
• Individual song times are displayed with every song
• Developed a capitalize function (Checkout how every song has a cool Capitalized Casing
• Playlist Parser included (choose the way songs are displayed using metadata!)
• The Shuffle Randomity Is Now Adjustable
• Added Shuffle And Go Option ( MusicMatchJB Behavior Emulated along with Smooth shuffle)
• Equalizer Presets
• Intelligent Open Dialog That Has Separate Filters For All
• Plugin Supported File types (Not Even Winamp Has This !!) PSF Dialog!!.
• Now the open dialog shows exactly the file types that the loaded plugins can play individually and change dynamically on the plugins being changed!
• Drag And Drop Support Of Files (Files Can Be dropped into playlist!!)
   

      Bugs Resolved 

• Reads correct DX8 effect values now
• Added Directx 8 check for DX8 effects to fix it from erupting big time on startup
• Plugin menu display bug resolved
• New and efficient manner in which the next song is played (PlayEnd Event tweak)
• Repeat error when nothing selected resolved
• Play button flaw rectified
• Input plugins page sometimes failed to load. effective remedy applied.
• Playlist rendering now faster.

      Known Issues 

• Sticky windows still needs some work
• Large number of files makes playlist rendering slow
• Free Registration does not work as yet

      Version 0.40 beta 

• Everything
   

• www.torry.net for being a great resource center for components and tutorials
• www.delphicorner.com the greatest Delphi forum ever!
• Silhwan Hyun  [email protected] for providing freeware header files ,drivers and dlls  to make Strratus possible, you are a real genius.  
• Jurgen Faul for unparalleled header files to read audio tags even of relatively unknown formats and providing them as freeware to all amateur developers E-mail: [email protected]  Website:  http://jfaul.de/atl
• P. Below for providing header files for file associations
• Angus Johnson & Anders Melander  for the Drag And drop Component Suite V 3.7
• Borland for giving coders newer and advanced versions of delphi
• The Beta Testers Vishal ,Charles ,Rahul ,Gurvinder (All SE IT PCCE) ,Sunil (Vasco) ,Abimanyu (Cochin) thanks guys for notifying me about the bugs and doing exceptional beta testing work.

• Author: Joviano Rahul Dias (SE IT)
• Email: [email protected]
• Web: www.geocities.com/jovi9200
• Documentation Mirror: www.geocities.com/jovi9200
• Ph: 91-0832-2755348
• Address: H no 3/1,Velsao-Pale ,Cansaulim ,Goa. Pin: 403712