<B>FLAC 0.6 released.</B> The encoder is now much faster. The -m option has been sped up by 4x and -r improved, meaning that in the default compression mode (-6), encoding should be at least 3 times faster. Other changes:
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<LI>Some bugs related to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> and pipes were fixed (see <A HREF="http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/7206/0/5013495/">here</A> for the discussion).</LI>
+ <LI>A "loose mid-side" (<TT>-M</TT>) option to the encoder has been added, which adaptively switches between independent and mid-side coding, instead of the exhaustive search that <TT>-m</TT> does.
<LI>An analyze mode (<B><TT>-a</TT></B>) has been added to <B><TT>flac</TT></B>. This is useful mainly for developers; currently it will dump info about each frame and subframe to a file. It's a text file in a format that can be easily processed by scripts; a separate analysis program is in the works.</LI>
<LI>The source now has an autoconf/libtool-based build system. This should allow the source to build "out-of-the-box" on many more platforms.</LI>
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