Which MX Player Custom Codec Do You Need?

Five codec files, and for almost everyone the answer is the same one - here is which to download and why the other four barely matter now.

The custom codec is the free add-on that teaches MX Player to decode AC3, EAC3, DTS and TrueHD.

It comes in a few different files, and picking between them is where most people stall.

The architecture choice mostly went away

This used to be a real decision. Older packs came as five separate downloads and you saved storage by picking the one matching your processor.

That stopped. The current pack is published as an all-in-one archive only, and so is the one before it. Separate architecture builds were last offered for the 1.90.1 pack.

So if you are running a recent MX Player, there is nothing to choose. Take the all-in-one and move on.

What the five files are

You will still meet these names on older packs, so here is what each one is for.

• aio (all-in-one) - every architecture in one archive, around 25 MB. The safe pick, and the only option on current packs.
• neon64 - ARM 64-bit. This covers essentially every Android phone and tablet sold in the last several years.
• neon - ARM 32-bit, for genuinely old or low-end devices.
• x86 - Intel 32-bit. Rare on phones, occasionally found on older tablets and emulators.
• x86_64 - Intel 64-bit. Emulators, some Chromebooks, a handful of tablets.

If you are choosing from an older pack and want the small file rather than the big one, neon64 is the right guess for almost any modern phone.

How to check your device architecture

Only worth doing if you are deliberately picking a single-architecture build.

Install CPU-Z, which has an Android version, and open the SOC tab. An entry reading arm64 or AArch64 means neon64, plain ARM or ARMv7 means neon, and anything mentioning Intel or x86 points at the x86 files.

If the answer looks ambiguous, that is your cue to stop reading and take the all-in-one.

The mistake that actually breaks playback

Almost nobody gets stuck because they picked the wrong architecture. The all-in-one removes that risk entirely, and even a wrong single-architecture file simply will not load rather than causing damage.

What does break playback is a codec pack built for a different MX Player version than the one you have installed. The app rejects it, and the error you see can look identical to having no codec at all.

Our guide on fixing EAC3 audio not supported in MX Player has the version-matching table and the full troubleshooting run, including what to do when the codec loads but the sound still does not.

Quick questions

Skip the guesswork and download the all-in-one MX Player Custom Codec - then tell us in the comments which device and MX Player version you are on, so the next reader has one more data point.