yup.
the toccata was basicly just a 16bit sound ship (DA converter) with a bit of buffering, so even playing back audio required CPU time. but very simple card so relativly easy to create drivers for hence alot of support
the prelude isn't much better, just a more modern sound chip. there are/were add ons available to allow CPUless mp3 playback, 24bit sound, digital SP/DIF optical ins and outs.
the sunrise AD516 had an onbaord DSP and was able to run realtime effects, but didn't have the horsepower to decode MP3 in realtime. plus sunrise didn't really release the documentation to the coding public to create drivers for it. there was/is an AHI hack for the AD516, but it requires Studio16 to be running in the background, and this sucked even more CPU and memory out of the system. it worked for MP3 playback in 16bit sound, but the CPU is still doing the decoding and just using Studio16/AD516 for audio playback.
Soundstage32pro a fully featured Zorro3, 24bit multi channel (in hardware) card. kicks arse. onboard DSP's, so could probably decode MP3's without even thinking about it. but as its so rare, no drivers except through Applied Magic's Producer software. probably still cost the thick end of a grand even now.
the Peggy+ mpeg I/O zorro2 card does have some drivers to do realtime MP2/3 playback, but as this is a fully featured Mpeg card you'd kinda expect it. just finding one is a problem.
the CD32 FMV module has drivers for it, but again, finding one.
there is a dongle that goes onto the parallel port or disk drive port (i can't remember exactly) and would allow mp3 playback as it contained the DSP, and 16bit sound chip in one box. so ostensibly you could just have an unaccelerated A600 with a hard disk feeding it MP3's and away you go...
so really you just want the delphina card, or an x-surf zorro card, as these have A1200 style clock ports on, so you could use the prelude+, or the melody A1200 sound cards (onboard MP3 decoders). but thats a bit of a botch job.
