I thought that SB128 and 040 can play mp3s!!!

[Framiga]

indeed! the 040@40 Mhz is the bare minimum for MP3 at full quality even if you'l get an expensive MP3 player box only then ;-)

IIRC (when i had a 040@28Mhz) i used the original plain 2.4 mpega.library and Paula (with 14bit driver/calibration). OR when i got the Repulse card, AHI 4.180 because it is the ligher(?) available.

[amiga_3k]

On the old A3000D I had (with Commodore's 040/25 accelerator) I used to first copy the MP3 to the RAM disk then run MPEGA to play them over Paula. It went quite well on 96kBit MPEG3s. I also had to increase its buffer-settings to fully load the MP3 into the buffer. I was never fond on using the Amiga clones of Winamp as they seem to suck up all the CPU power for their GUI's.

[jj]

are there PPC verions of the mpega library and could I expect to be able to play MP3's at full quality through paula or does the old context switching rear its ugly head?

[Karlos]

JJ wrote:
are there PPC verions of the mpega library and could I expect to be able to play MP3's at full quality through paula or does the old context switching rear its ugly head?

Yes there are. And you only get context switches for each chunk thats loaded, decoded and fed to ahi, which if you use anything more than 64KB is never an issue in my experience.

I find playing 44kHz mp3 via ppc on 3.x no problem. AHI was almost always the bottleneck (until I dropped back to v4)

[MASACREWILL]

..hi there, thank You all for explanation, well, it seems that I am going to have another free PCI slot, becouse there is no need for me to use SB128 then anymore.. :angry: :lol: ..btw TV Card went off last week as I have TV-Tuner in LCD now (but I don`t use it anyway).. :-P ..ok, then I go back to Paula 14 bit output and will use just MpegaGUI for mp3.. (maybe..) thanks anyway

[MASACREWILL]

swift240 wrote:
Something is wrong with what you have for sure.
As when I run Amp or AmigaAmp or even Songplayer latest version, I play MP3's with no problem.
I run a 1200 with Mediator SX, SB128 and Apollo Turbo at 40Mhz with 32 meg Fast ram.
AHI is setup correct.
I hope you get it up and running soon, as with your setup it should run MP3 with no real problem
If i can do it on my setup up, you should do it on yours.

Mike.

..If only I could get an idea WHAT is wrong in my system..  :-(
..AHI is set correctly (IMHO), I have chosen SB128 HiFi 16 bit stero ++ modes, but I think that bottleneck in my system  (beside the CPU) is 4xEIDE disk controller.. simply IDE consumes so much CPU power..

[Piru]

@MASACREWILL

I think that bottleneck in my system (beside the CPU) is 4xEIDE disk controller.. simply IDE consumes so much CPU power..

Actually, reading the compressed data (mp3) off the disk takes less time than transferring the decoded sampledata (stereo 16bit) over Mediator. A1200 Mediator has no DMA to amiga system memory, it's all CPU poking and peeking.

However, in this case the obviously most time consuming part is the mp3 decoding. SB128 can't speed that up.

[Karlos]

Piru wrote:

A1200 Mediator has no DMA to amiga system memory, it's all CPU poking and peeking.

Cue the resident elbox fanboy ;-)

[MASACREWILL]

Piru wrote:
@MASACREWILL

I think that bottleneck in my system (beside the CPU) is 4xEIDE disk controller.. simply IDE consumes so much CPU power..

Actually, reading the compressed data (mp3) off the disk takes less time than transferring the decoded sampledata (stereo 16bit) over Mediator. A1200 Mediator has no DMA to amiga system memory, it's all CPU poking and peeking.

However, in this case the obviously most time consuming part is the mp3 decoding. SB128 can't speed that up.

..I must agree. 060 would make significant difference? I guess so.. but mp3 playing is not my priority in Amiga usage.. (well, I don`t know what is it actually, as I just watch demos and play around with workbench when I get some time)  

[Piru]

060 would allow you to listen to most mp3s, but still it would suck considerable portion of the CPU time and it would still be easy to get hickups and gaps by just doing something CPU intensive.

I prefer to use G4 @ 1GHz, mp3s take couple of percent CPU time there... plus I can watch all my movies with it.

[Framiga]

.If only I could get an idea WHAT is wrong in my system..
..AHI is set correctly (IMHO), I have chosen SB128 HiFi 16 bit stero ++ modes, but I think that bottleneck in my system (beside the CPU) is 4xEIDE disk controller.. simply IDE consumes so much CPU power..

theres nothing wrong with your 040 system!

swift240 was speaking about his Apollo 1240 at 40Mhz... its all another matter with a 040@40Mhz!

You can only play MP3 at 22050 using an original mpega.library 2.4, AHI 4.180 and mpega or an old version of SongPlayer (the latest is more heavy)

Ah... if you use SongPlayer, set a large buffer and DON'T enable the tones (or leave it at 0)

and install asyncio.library, then enable it in SonPlayer prefs.

[MASACREWILL]

..well, this discussion is quite pointless for me now as I use 3100+ Athlon64 PC on everyday basis for everything needed.. SB 128 will go off my Amiga in the weekend, so there will be some more fresh air again ;-)

btw what OS do You use with that G4?

[MASACREWILL]

Framiga wrote:

theres nothing wrong with your 040 system!

swift240 was speaking about his Apollo 1240 at 40Mhz... its all another matter with a 040@40Mhz!

..why it is all another matter when I have got Blizzard 1240 at 40 MHz??

[Piru]

@MASACREWILL

what OS do You use with that G4?

MorphOS, Mac OS X and Debian GNU/Linux.

[Framiga]

@MASACREWILL

i didn't noticed you have a 40 Mhz CPU.

Anyway follow what i wrote about software.

[MASACREWILL]

..very interesting, very! If I wasn`t quite satisfied with my PC system, than maybe, maybe.. ;-)