Disclaimer - Plugin Use is As-Is

Breakthru Software makes NO warrantees about the use of any plugins with Sound Mill. Plugins are third party software and any problems you have with a plugin should be addressed to the software maker. You may post plugin questions to the user forum but Support is not staffed to deal with installation and testing of plugins. As with any driver install, it is prudent to create a Windows Restore point before installing and testing plugins. If you find Sound Mill becomes unstable after adding a plugin, our best advice is uninstall it.

How to add more audio formats

A standard Sound Mill install supports the following audio formats via the WMP native driver: WAV, MP3, WMA, MIDI (MID), AU, AIFF (AIF), MPEG (MPG), and WMV.

You can extend Sound Mill with other audio formats (ex. OGG, FLAC, AAC, etc.) as follows.

General Steps

1. Install the WMP plugin  - First, you locate and install the Microsoft Windows Media Player® (WMP) plugin that supports the format you need. In general, if you install a WMP plugin and you can play that audio file format directly with WMP, there is a good chance it will work with Sound Mill. However, there are no guarentees. Sound Mill uses the DirectShow API to WMP, so see if the plugin documentation mentions that type of WMP support.
2. Add related file type  - Via the Options -- Sound Item dialog, you add the file types that you want Sound Mill to recognize (ex. OGG, FLAC, etc.). If you forget this step, Sound Mill will not let you add an unrecognized audio format to a Sound Item.

Free plugins we have tested

We have tested some free plugins for adding OGG, FLAC and AAC audio file formats (detailed below). We tested with WMP 11 on a Windows XP SP2 machine. However, the Disclaimer above still applies. We make no representations about the quality or suitability of these plugins. They worked fine in our lab -- that's all we can vouch for. You may find other plugins that will work as well.

Tip - Install your plugin then test it directly with WMP before trying it with Sound Mill. Drag and drop the audio file into the WMP "Now Playing" list and play it. If it does not work with WMP, it will not likely work in Sound Mill.

Adding AAC support

Setup Steps

This setup takes about 2 minutes.


1. Install the Orban AAC Plugin  - Download and install the free Orban/Coding Technologies AAC/aacPlus Plugin™. It is capable of playing AAC/aacPlus™/HE-AAC/eAAC+ audio files and streams in several standards-based, non-proprietary formats. It seems to work fine.
2. Add AAC file types to Sound Mill  - See the Options -- Sound Item dialog, for how to add this. File extensions supported by this plugin are: AAC, MP4, M4A, M4B, and 3GP.

Adding OGG and FLAC support

Setup Steps

If you are a wizard with computers and all goes smoothly, this setup will take about 30 minutes. A computer muggle will probably take longer. There may be easier plugins to install for this type, but we did not try any others.


1. Install the FLAC Directshow Filters  - Download and install the Illiminable Ogg Directshow Filter. It will add WMP support for: Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, Ogg Theora, Ogg FLAC and native FLAC. We installed the Current UNSTABLE Version (0.80.15039) - 14/06/2008. According to them, "Unstable does not necessarily mean that it will crash more. It just means it hasn't been tested, so it may or may not be as stable as a proper release. ". You need to go to their Download page to find this version. It seems to work fine. The older versions did not work in our tests.
2. Install WMP Tag Support Extender  -The WMP Tag Support Extender (WMPTSE) allows Ape, MPC, WavPack, OptimFROG, AAC, Flac and Ogg (read only) tags to be used in WMP. Follow these Configure the WMPTSE Plugin instructions starting at instruction #3.
3. Add file types OGG and FLAC to Sound Mill  - See the Options -- Sound Item dialog, for how to add these. File extensions supported by this plugin are: OGG and FLAC.