I released the first development snapshot of the BonkEnc v1.1 CVS tree today. It provides a first glimpse of some of what will eventually be in BonkEnc v1.1. Here are some highlights.

The BonkEnc Component Architecture now supports encoder/decoder DLLs and provides access to external command line encoders. That way you can now use encoders like Nero's HE-AAC or Musepack with BonkEnc. The snapshot package includes Musepack and WavPack encoders and comes with ready configuration files for TAK, Shorten and Nero AAC. Just copy the respective encoder executables (takc.exe, shortn32.exe or neroAacEnc.exe) to the codecs/cmdline subdirectory and BonkEnc will recognize the encoders at next start. Support for command line encoders is still very basic, however. For example, you cannot set encoder options using the BonkEnc GUI, yet. Expect better integration with BonkEnc in one of the next snapshots.

Thanks to the new flexibility gained through the BoCA interface, components for encoding and decoding Monkey's Audio (*.ape, *.mac) files could be added. Monkey's Audio is fully supported by BonkEnc now.

The LAME MP3 decoder has been replaced by a MAD decoder component. MAD is the MPEG Audio Decoder and should provide better decoding quality than LAME (however, MAD's 24 bit decoding is not yet supported in BonkEnc). It also successfully decodes some problem files which used to make LAME and BonkEnc crash in previous releases.

Finally, the configuration dialog got a new layout. You will now find a listbox with entries for each configurable component at the left side of the window while the configuration options for the selected component will appear at the right. This has become necessary due to the switch to BoCA. Lots of configurable components just couldn't be integrated into the tabbed configuration dialog of previous releases.

I hope you will have fun playing around with the new features. Please note, however, that this is a highly experimential alpha release. It's still recommended to use BonkEnc v1.0.x for daily encoding work.