AmiTunes 0.5

[Daedalus]

Well, it's coming along nicely... Slowly, but nicely. I've just finished the latest version of AmiTunes - my music manager application, and it's finished enough for me to start using it for its intended purpose - running my A1200-based MP3 jukebox. As such, it does have a very minimal GUI and isn't the nicest to use, but I still use it almost every day on my A1, using AmigaAmp instead of the MAS Player it would normally use.

I've uploaded it to mus/play on AmiNet, and you can also download it from my website here:

AmiTunes 0.5

Please let me know what you think... Like I said, I don't think I'll do more on this version. I plan instead to rewrite it with a full, modern GUI and internal decoder for high-end Amigas, but if you have any suggestions or bug fixes, I'd appreciate them!

[Cammy]

Heya! Is there any chance you would add streaming 8SVX and WAV support? CD tracks and MP3s converted to WAVs play really nicely through Paula and don't need any additional hardware or a fast CPU. I'd love to be able to use my A600 as a little Jukebox Amiga full of WAVs of all my favourite music. Sure, they take up twice as much space as MP3s but they sound fine (to me at least), and I can just get some cheap SD cards to store the music on, which I can easily swap around with my PCMCIA Multi-card adapter.

[AmigaHeretic]

Sure, they take up twice as much space as MP3s

I my experience WAVs take up about 10 times as much space as an MP3s.  ie. a 40MB WAV = 4MB mp3.

But storage being cheap these days it might not matter to much.  That and it would be cool use for an A600!

[koshman]

Well, it depends on the bitrate - WAVs are approximately 10x the size of 128kbps MP3s.
Is it really possible to play WAVs on slow Amigas without any problems? I'm quite surprised that decoding MP3 would add that much overhead. But if so, then it's great, I have all my audio in FLAC anyway and that's comparable to WAV in size. The SQ would suck for serious music listening, but e.g. audio books or basically any spoken word should be fine.

[Moto]

I'm trying to remember back, but I think it wasn't until the Pentium II (200+ Mhz) came out that I was really able to play MP3s while doing other tasks without audio skipping.  Around 1997 ?  Sort of coincides with the release of winamp?  So it makes sense that even the 060 struggles to decode them and do other tasks.

[Cammy]

I've been ripping all my CDs to WAVs using a Linux program called Sound Juicer. It's so easy to use for this task, and I have it set to record the wavs at 22050Hz 16bit 2-channels. Each CD ends up being around 300-400MB, and these are pretty long CDs (classical music and film scores mostly). They play perfectly through SongPlayer and Play16 on my A1200, but I can't find any programs that will play them on the A600. I have tried Play16 1.8 (the last 68000 version) but it crashes ramlib and won't start, so I can't test how well they play on the 68000.

Does anyone know of a program that can stream WAVs on a 68000 CPU?

[paul1981]

I'm sure I've used the Play16 68000 version to play 16 bit 44KHz wavs on my A600 from hard disk, and using the 14bit driver...but I'm going back a couple of years now.  It's not set up currently, but if anyone's interested then I will hook it up again and give a definite answer.

I have to agree with you though Cammy, I don't see the point in mp3's now days.  Storage is so cheap, internet is so fast...let's all use cd quality wavs.

For classical music though, I'd much prefer vinyl LOL.

I prefer mp3's at 256kbs or 320, anything less just sounds awful to me.

I'm pretty sure HippoPlayer can play wavs from hard disk, or it may me aiff's, or 8svx....can't remember, but I know it can play direct from disk.

[paul1981]

Yes koshman, playing mp3 files almost cripples my 060/66 amiga....which is what, 200 times faster than an A500/A600 with it's 7MHz 68000.

[AmigaHeretic]

I've been ripping all my CDs to WAVs using a Linux program called Sound Juicer. It's so easy to use for this task, and I have it set to record the wavs at 22050Hz 16bit 2-channels. Each CD ends up being around 300-400MB, and these are pretty long CDs (classical music and film scores mostly). They play perfectly through SongPlayer and Play16 on my A1200, but I can't find any programs that will play them on the A600. I have tried Play16 1.8 (the last 68000 version) but it crashes ramlib and won't start, so I can't test how well they play on the 68000.

Does anyone know of a program that can stream WAVs on a 68000 CPU?

Hmmm...  I know Sound Machine will play WAVs on 68000 and it even runs on KS1.2 systems if you have req.library installed.

BUT... I don't think it will stream it off the HD.  I shouldn't say I don't think as I have no idea, but it's pretty old.  So you would need a lot of RAM if it won't stream.  Enough RAM to fit the file into, but it will do 40MB+ files.  

http://de4.aminet.net/mus/edit/SoundMachine.lha


There is also HDPlay (not the HD Play that does recording and all that, I think this one is older)  
http://aminet.net/package/mus/play/HDPlay
http://aminet.net/mus/play/HDPlay.lha

It will stream WAVs on 68000, but it will only play 8bit waves not 16bit.  And if you going to convert them to 8bit well then you might as well just convert them to 8SVX.


I like this idea though.  An A600 music playing machine.  Here in the US A600 are expensive.  Infact I'd probably trade my A3000 for a nice A600.  


Yeah, I played some 16bit 44KHZ waves through Paula (just 8bit mode not 14bit) and it sounds really good.