RKAU Audio Compressor v1.06
===========================

!!Please note this release is NOT backwards compatible with v1.04!!

To install the winamp plugin, copy it to your WinAmp\plugins directory.


* A short explanation of the options:

-l[n]  This option sets the compression level. The possible values for
       n are 1 (fast), 2 (normal) and 3 (max). The default is 2.

-q[n]  This enables a naive lossy compression mode. It allows for a
       maximum of n bits of error. This will ensure that the absolute
       error is always less than 2^n, and on average should be much
       less. 

-v[n]  This selects the Variable Rate Quantization (VRQ) mode. This
       mode adapts the quantization rate to the volume of the music,
       making the loss virtually unnoticable. The quality level is
       specified by n which can range from 1 (low quality) to 8 (high
       quality). If the level is omitted then it defaults to 1.

-t[+-] This option enables or disables the streaming format. The
       streaming format has support for seeking on playback, at a
       small cost in compression ratio. The default is enabled.

-s[+-] This option separates the channels when compressing stereo WAV
       files. This stops RKAU from doing any cross channel compression
       which in a small number of cases can hurt compression slightly.


* New in v1.07

I made a small mistake when compiling v1.06 which has caused the
stereo compression to be disabled by default. This release now enables
this by default again as it should be.
Also fixed the bits per sample calculation which was generating
meaningless junk in the previous version.

* New in v1.06

If I haven't made any mistakes then this version should be backwards
compatible with version 1.05.
The main change was to fix a memory leak in the plugin (play a streaming
file for 20-30min and your swapfile is full), and a bug that could cause
a crash when playing non-streaming files.

* New in v1.05

Possibly the most noticable feature I have added is the streaming
support - Now at last you can seek easily on playback!

I have streamlined much of the codec and optimised it, so the encoding
is much faster, and the compression slightly better. In doing so I
also added three compression levels so that you have a choice about
how hard you want to make the encoder work. 

I rewrote much of the winamp plugin guts such that it now buffers the
decoding. On my machine the only thing that could make it skip was the
pesky priority 13 KERNAL32.DLL thread (*just a little anti-Microsoft
gripe* If the Win95 kernal is doing a menial task like reorganising
it's swap file it should spawn a lower priority thread!). Please do
report if you are having issues with it.

Also the Winamp plugin supports ID3v1 tags.


* New in v1.04

Well, I have added interchannel filtering for stereo files which improves
compression ratio by about 2.5% (on music), and much more on sound effects
files.
It is also able to decompress RKA files, generating WAV files. It will
automatically decide whether to compress or decompress based on the format
of the file given on the command line.


