GBA MusicPlayer Advance

MusicPlayer Advance is an program that lets you play music files on the Gameboy Advance. It works just like WinAmp, you have a play list where you can select your songs. It has a display for Minutes:Seconds and a display for the current song, it has even a progress bar. Play, Stop, Pause are perfectly selectable with the Gameboy Advance buttons. Other neat functions are the 'Repeat' and 'Shuffle'. You can also choose between samplerates and channels now.

Download Music Player Advance

How can I insert songs?

That's where the MPAwrite.exe comes in handy.
First you fill in the path to the MusicPlayer Advance GBA PLAYER file. (mplayera.gba)
Then you fill in where you want to save it. Then you start adding the songs, fill in the Name of the song, and the Path to the song file (.mpa), then press 'Add to list'. I've added Shaggy.mpa as a test, so you can test how it SHOULD sound on the GBA. (to show that the quality is good) Oh, the .mpa file holds the samplerate and channels, so you can easily spread it around the globe.. :-) Once you have all the desired songs in the list, press 'Write'. Now you've got a nice GBA ROM file with your songs on it :).

How do I create the song file?

Ok, this is the tricky part. * .MPA files are compressed files, I will explain how to create them.
First you will need a song (mp3/wav, any kind) and then you convert them to .pcm files.
Not just any pcm file, the resolution must be 16-Bit, formatted as 16-bit intel, stereo or mono
and samplerates can be 16000,11025 or 8000. If you choose an high samplerate, the quality will be better, but size will be bigger. I suggest samplerate 11025 , it has good quality and it is small in size. Choosing stereo will double the size.

I used CoolEdit 2000 to create my .pcm files , as it is the best music editor around.
CoolEdit Users Guide can be found here

Ok, once you've got the .pcm file, open up the MPAwrite.exe.
In the bottom of the program you find something called 'MusicPlayer Advance Encoder', that is what you need right now. Enter the filename of your converted .pcm file and then the desired filename for the .mpa file. (this will be the compressed file, wich you will need for the
player) Choose the right samplerate and channels, then press 'Encode'.
Now you've got yourself a .mpa file. I suggest you read the section 'How can I insert songs' now :-).

Buttons?

A = Play
B = Stop
Select = Shuffle/Repeat ON or OFF
Start = Pause
Left = Select Repeat
Right = Select Shuffle
L = Lock mode
R = Sleep mode
To select a song, press down or up, then B and then A.

TIP: If your songs are not played correctly on the GBA , its not converted correctly.