Very little is known about this encoder. The author claims he developed the encoding engine alone (hmmm...), the decoding routines are based on Bugsy Wabbit's decoder library (very popular among Delphi programmers a long time ago), and it only supports bitrates of 112, 128 and 256kbps (the author says the engine can only support that).

Update: Upon further investigation, and after Benjamin's feedback below, it turns out that X-Codec is indeed illegally using the Xing tompg encoder. Whenever a file is encoded, the encoder is extracted to the file NETSUB32.EXE in the \Windows folder and executed. As soon as encoding finishes, it is deleted. NETSUB32.EXE is exactly the tompg.exe program, but with the incriminating strings linking it to Xing Tech removed.


Date: 1998
Version: 1.2
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: x-codec.zip - 542kB

• Feedback from Benjamin Derge:

It's my opinion that "X-Codec" uses the same engine as Xing's "TOMPG" encoder, as the programs produce identical bitstreams. I checked in EncSpot (same bit resevoir graph, no short blocks for either), and compared the decoded WAVs using EAC, and by all accounts, they are spot on.

Also, the name X-Codec is at BEST a weakly veiled allusion to 'Xing'.