Which Zorro II Soundcard?

[Corrie]

Hi all,

I am buying an Amiga zorro II soundcard for my A4000T. I am running a 68060 @ 66Mhz and I have been looking at the prelude or the melody zorro II cards. I mainly want a soundcard to play mp3's, so the less strain on the 060 the better. I also want it to play descent quality sound in those games that use AHI. Can anyone make some recommendations?

[bloodline]

Toccata's were really cool, and were supported by AHI.

Don't know Delfina flipper? Is really nice, supports ahi, toccata emulation...

Look http://ami.ga/products/delfina_e.htm

[JaXanim]

Prelude has always come out tops in Amiga sound card reviews. I have one on my Z4 bus and it's simply superb. I fully recommend a Prelude.

Cheers,

JaX

[matt3k]

I would stay away from the Delfina Lite Series.  The only way to reduce cpu load is to overclock them heavily.  This can lead to stability issues.

Good luck!

Matt

[Crumb]

AFAIK the only soundcard available that can play mp3 without using almost cpu is the delfina flipper...

[darksun9210]

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.

[Corrie]

What about the Melody ZII ?? I read that it has a built in hardware decoder, does anyone know how this will run with 68060 playing MP3's?

[pVC]

I don't have had any stability issues with my Delfina Lite. It's overclocked from 40MHz to 60MHz with oscillator crystal. Less overclocking would probably be enough too. Nowadays you can overclock them with software too. Other Delfina models won't need overclocking to play biggest bitrate mp3:s.
Me and many of my friends are very pleased with Delfinas.. it's just joy to play mp3 without any cpu-load at all Not to talk about other features of Delfina.. like mixing several audiosources with it (3 external inputs in Lite).

[Crumb]

Melody Z2 does not play MP3 using its DSP. It only can play mpeg1 and 2.

So again, Delphina is the answer.

There's a project in aminet of a clockport soundcard that plays mp3 too, I asked the guy and he told me he would need about 20 people interested in buying one, then he would do a small batch. If I remember correctly he only was going to charge around 120€...

[pVC]

And of course there's the MAS-player. You can make one yourself or buy premade thing under 50 pounds or something. It connects to parallel (and serial?) port and has good sound quality, but it's only for playing mp3 and doesn't have other features of the usual sound cards. You can use it's own fullscreen player or AmigaAmp for example.

[redrumloa]

I'd recomend either a second hand Delfina Lite or a new Delfina Flipper.

The Delfina Lite is a good bargin nowadays second hand and it has a DSP so you can play MP3s with no CPU load at all. It has a few quirks you have to live with, like a fake crash requestor when using the DSP for decoding, and setting up all support software is somewhat cryptic but when all is said and done it works pretty darn good.

The Delfina Flipper is a good NEW product.

[Crumb]

A friend told me that with the new delphina.library he hasn't crashes with his Delphina Lite...

BTW If I remember correctly the Delphina Lite was "underclocked" :-D and I've heard that overclocking it a little it works really well.

[sdesros]

I might be looking to sell my Delfina Lite as I don't use my A4000 much anymore.

[DanDude]

@matt3k

I'm now using it as a loud paging PA thru the same speakers.  Although there's a nice proggy to run MP3-layer2 taking 1/3 the cpu load, but I can't record any long sound without any dropouts.  :-(