sandpiper wrote:
It's more the cheap soundcards (no need to pay £50 for a Toccata)
Interesting. I see in the press release that there is a new audio class for AHI. I wonder if it would be possible to play mp3s without loading the cpu?
AHI has nothing to do with MP3 decoding, so DMA USB sound is of no use there. It's generally mpega.library or, if you're lucky, an mpeg.device (delfina, cd32), that does the heavy lifting for MP3s.
The Deneb's high transfer speeds probably benefit AHI's CPU usage in general, but someone still needs to write a usbaudiompeg.device for CPU-less MP3 playback. And the USB sound dongle needs to support such a thing. :-) It's the same reason the Melody, Toccata, AD516, etc. can't offload the CPU for MP3 playback - the latter has no driver and the other two, I think, don't have the necessary hardware on the board.
