Huge list of improvements

[andrewd207]

PascalAudioSuite — Huge Improvements! 🎉

We've just landed a big round of improvements across PascalAudioSuite. Playback is
more capable, seeking now works consistently across the common formats, FLAC
encoding is here, and the whole pipeline is more robust and observable. Here's
what's new.

🎚️ Full transport controls (play / pause / stop)

Sources now have a real, shared transport built right into the base class:

• Play / Pause / Stop are implemented once on the stream-source base, so every
  decoder gets them for free.
• Pause cleanly halts the pipeline without tearing it down — downstream stays
  alive and simply stops receiving, then resumes exactly where it left off with no
  lost audio.
• Stop halts and rewinds to the start (when the source can seek).
• A new PlayState (psStopped / psPlaying / psPaused) lets a player tell
  "paused" apart from "finished" — something a UI genuinely needs.

⏩ Consistent seeking across the common codecs

Seeking is now solid and uniform:

• WAV gained full seek / position / length support (IPAPlayable).
• M4A/AAC seeking is now sample-accurate, including long files (internal
  counters widened to 64-bit so multi-hour tracks seek and report length
  correctly).
• Vorbis reports its seekability the authoritative way (via libvorbis'
  ov_seekable), so it's honest even on streaming/chained inputs.
• Every decoder now reports MaxPosition/Position consistently, and seeking a
  non-seekable stream is logged instead of silently doing the wrong thing.

💾 FLAC encoding — with metadata!

You can now write FLAC, not just read it:

• New TPAFlacEncoderLink encodes lossless FLAC straight from the pipeline and
  is auto-registered like the other encoders.
• Tagging is built in — call AddComment('TITLE', '…'), AddComment('ARTIST', '…'), etc. before encoding and the VORBIS_COMMENT block is written into the file,
  matching the workflow of the Ogg/Vorbis encoder.
• Verified end-to-end: bit-exact lossless round-trip, valid STREAMINFO, and tags
  that read back cleanly in metaflac/ffprobe.

🪵 Built-in logging (TPALog)

The suite now has a proper, thread-safe diagnostics facility:

• A single, global, thread-safe log with one pluggable handler — point it at
  your own sink, or use the default.
• Optional printf-style formatting, four levels (Debug/Info/Warning/Error), and
  it never throws.
• The library now routes its diagnostics through it (initialization, every
  init-failure path, and exception handlers), so you get clear visibility into
  what the pipeline is doing — no stray WriteLns.

🛡️ Robustness & polish under the hood

A bunch of hardening that makes everyday use smoother:

• Decoders shut their pipelines down cleanly at end-of-stream (no hangs).
• Bad/short/streaming inputs are handled gracefully across the Ogg/Vorbis and
  CD paths instead of risking a crash.
• Output streams are now released correctly by stream destinations (tightened
  resource/handle ownership).
• Memory-clean throughout — the new paths verify leak-free under Valgrind.

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In short: transport controls everywhere, dependable seeking, FLAC encoding with
tags, real logging, and a sturdier core. Lots to enjoy. 🚀

[rchastain2]

Exciting news!

It's fun, because I started yesterday a project of a music player based on PascalAudio and MSEgui. For now I am designing the interface. If you don't mind, I will show it to you when it is more or less finished.