MacAmp Mp3 Experiment on PB1400c/166

[Cory5412]

I forgot how giant 1990s computers are.



I've got a ~base-ish 7.6.1 install with the OT/AS upgrades needed to connect to newer file servers, speed doubler 8, and some of my favorite utilities and software. (AppleWorks 5, Office 98, most of the mid-1990s Claris software really, stuffit 5, etc etc.)

I'm still putting some of the software pieces into place, MacGarden claims SoundJam MP 2.5.3 runs on 7.6.1 so I'm starting there just for fun.

vtools

oh whoops!
http://vtools.68kmla.org/ (vintage-friendly) - side-project where I run an ASIP6 server and have it available in public. It's chiefly a file server and the email bits never happened.

A couple years ago a friend gave me another LCPDS ethernet card and I was able to pop it into the 6200 this morning, which is nice because this thing only has like a 2-gig disk, but vtools has a couple terabytes to its name.

I also do, a little bit, love a good old school

Also, great news about 16-bit output on the 6200!

 

[Cory5412]

update: SoundJam MP Plus 2.5.3 requires 8.1 and it appears to actually require 8.1.

Looking again to see if it's 2.0.2 or an earlier 2.5.x release.

 

[Snial]

I forgot how giant 1990s computers are.

View attachment 73780

There's still space for clothes though !

I've got a ~base-ish 7.6.1 install with the OT/AS upgrades needed to connect to newer file servers, speed doubler 8, and some of my favorite utilities and software. (AppleWorks 5, Office 98, most of the mid-1990s Claris software really, stuffit 5, etc etc.)

Good stuff!

I'm still putting some of the software pieces into place, MacGarden claims SoundJam MP 2.5.3 runs on 7.6.1 so I'm starting there just for fun.

oh whoops!
http://vtools.68kmla.org/ (vintage-friendly) - side-project where I run an ASIP6 server and have it available in public. It's chiefly a file server and the email bits never happened.

OK, interesting!

A couple years ago a friend gave me another LCPDS ethernet card and I was able to pop it into the 6200 this morning, which is nice because this thing only has like a 2-gig disk, but vtools has a couple terabytes to its name.

I was experimenting with my LCPDS, but it wasn't working between it and my Dad's iMac G4, probably as I need a cross-over ethernet cable.

I also do, a little bit, love a good old school

It's a flashback to a less stressful and simpler world!

Also, great news about 16-bit output on the 6200!

Maybe they needed it when they started putting internal CD drives in Macs? No good having 44.1kHz x 16-bit x stereo CDs if the output is crunchy 8-bit at 22kHz .

 

[MOS8_030]

SoundJam was/is a great program. I still have my copy around somewhere.
I'm still mad the Apple bought it.

 

[Cory5412]

Briefly: 6200's sound output is 16/22khz.

I'll pull out the 1400 at some point but I'm pretty sure it, too, will be 16/22, just because it's basically mobile 6200 but with some different modularity.

SoundJam MP 2.0.2 works, however:

• 16/22khz sound output is pretty disappointing
• ripping with the default settings (128 kilobit auto sample rate) is very very slow, I've been averaging 0.2x if I don't ake the machine do anything else, 0.1x while multi-tasking in Claris Organizer, and "functionally infnite" if you make the machine play another MP3 at the same time

With that in mind, the CD drive almost certianly has its own 16/44.1 DAC and CD audio is probably passed through the whole system in analog with no further processing or resampling, basically an internal version of how your external CD drive would've worked, which is why playing a CD will sound so much better than playing an MP3. Or even an uncompressed AIFF.

I actually wonder if "onboard sound hardware not good" is part of why so many people were so unimpressed with early MP3 playback.

But I'm very aware I'm using software from 2000 on a Mac from 1995 and if I were to use a Mac from 2000, things would be significantly better.

With that in mind, and also for logistical convenience here at home, I'm thinking my next trial will be with either the 7200/90 or my 8500/"100" (601@100 from a 7500, but I have other faster 604 modules as well), using probably the same software at first.

At some point, I'll pull out a G3-G4/USB/9.2.2 Mac and play both with the newer version of SoundJam, Audion, and MusicMatch, although TBH by the time of 9, back int he day I was starting to build a small collection of MP3s and it was in iTunes, so it's (for me) gonna be less about whether or not the machine even can and more about what the other software is like. I'm interested, regardless.

EDIT/add: one thing I'd like to do, either with my iMac/400 (if it recognizes my USB CD-RW drive, to save wear on the internal one, or my TiBook, maybe just on a 10.6 Mac) is to rip a bunch of AIFFs to save the CD drive on these various Macs from being a factor, and maybe work out a better way to do some timing/benchmarking.

I do have a 6100, I forget if it's a /60 or /66 but in my other testing it and my 6200/75 are basically neck and neck at almost everything so I'm not sure if I'm expecting a meaningful difference there, vs say the 7200/90 or 8500/100 (or even a 7200/75, say.)

 

[Snial]

Briefly: 6200's sound output is 16/22khz.

You're right it's 22kHz, but according to the developer note, it's 8-bit stereo. In fact the 11kHz playback mode cheats too, because it just repeats each sample in software. An Mp3 player should choose a 22kHz sample rate (which will make file sizes nearly half the size I guess ).

I'll pull out the 1400 at some point but I'm pretty sure it, too, will be 16/22, just because it's basically mobile 6200 but with some different modularity.

The 1400 handles 44.1kHz x 16-bit stereo, from the developer notes.

SoundJam MP 2.0.2 works, however:

• 16/22khz sound output is pretty disappointing
• ripping with the default settings (128 kilobit auto sample rate) is very very slow, I've been averaging 0.2x if I don't ake the machine do anything else, 0.1x while multi-tasking in Claris Organizer, and "functionally infnite" if you make the machine play another MP3 at the same time

I was ripping at 128kbps x 44.1kHz on MPecker, and it averaged 0.1x.

I actually wonder if "onboard sound hardware not good" is part of why so many people were so unimpressed with early MP3 playback.

Quite possibly. Also a number of early 1990s portable CD players weren't that good, as they only had a 12 or 13-bit DAC (this was before delta-sigma DACs).

With that in mind, and also for logistical convenience here at home, I'm thinking my next trial will be with either the 7200/90 or my 8500/"100" (601@100 from a 7500, but I have other faster 604 modules as well), using probably the same software at first.

OK, also interesting.

I do have a 6100, I forget if it's a /60 or /66 but in my other testing it and my 6200/75 are basically neck and neck at almost everything so I'm not sure if I'm expecting a meaningful difference there, vs say the 7200/90 or 8500/100 (or even a 7200/75, say.)

Useful as another reference point. I think the purpose IMHO is to find out their practicability w.r.t MP3 encoding and decoding. Encoding at 1 hour album at 0.1x would have still been quite a waste of disk space then.

Does the 6100 have proper 16-bit stereo at 44.1kHz? If so, it'd beat the 6200 in that respect.

 

[LaPorta]

I didn’t realize a 6200 had a low-rate sound system like that. The 660av we had definitely had 44khz/16 bit, so I figured every machine after that (all Power PCs) would too. Guess I was wrong.

 

[Cory5412]

chatting about this on the IRC today, @demik found some information I had missed before, the 1400 is less "mobile 6200" in a direct sense but the 5300 is pretty much a PPC-upgraded 190 in the same way the 6200 is a PPC-upgraded 630, so commentary about the underlying architectures do largely still match, but that's probably most of how the 1400 was able to get 16/44.1 sound.

I got my TiBook out, installed musicmatch on it, then had to install iTunes to control CD autoplay, and, I'm ripping a few CDs in iTunes now.
This is an extreme nostalgia trip, and also (obviously) the TiBook is well within MP3 as a capability. The machine seems to have no trouble at all ripping MP3s while running dreamweaver MX, Claris Organizer, and Word 98; or even while doing network/local file transfers, or ripping-and-playing at the same time. That's, of course, what we expect out of a mid-late era G4 mildly upgraded. (160G@5400RPM hard disk, 1G RAM), but iTunes 2 still connecting the CDDB certainly brings it home for me.

iTunes 2 on this machine (which I think is a 1GHz) rips AIFFs at ~16x on average, peaking a bit higher on longer discs/tracks. That's basically what I'd expect as this machine's DVD burner can read CDs at 24x. In the iTunes default rip settings are for 160k MP3 and under those settings I was getting ~10x, which is still extremely reasonable.

I'm gonna see if the AIFFs I ripped will play nice with MusicMatch and if it'll do the minidisc dubbing trick with them and if so, I'll probably back off from this until the end of the other thing I've been working on.

 

[demik]

I didn’t realize a 6200 had a low-rate sound system like that. The 660av we had definitely had 44khz/16 bit, so I figured every machine after that (all Power PCs) would too. Guess I was wrong.

A 6200 is a 630 board with a PPC upgrade soldered in
x100 series had 44khz/16 bit, as well as most others PPCs, so you are mostly right

 

[Snial]

chatting about this on the IRC today, @demik found some information I had missed before, the 1400 is less "mobile 6200" in a direct sense but the 5300 is pretty much a PPC-upgraded 190 in the same way the 6200 is a PPC-upgraded 630, so commentary about the underlying architectures do largely still match, but that's probably most of how the 1400 was able to get 16/44.1 sound.

I've gone through 2 evolutions of my grasp of the PB1400/PB5300 and PM6200/5200[*]. The first was my experience of a 5200 in early 1996, which frankly I thought was great! That's mostly because my Mac at the time was an LCII (which still works BTW). Then I read the LowEndMac article about it being a Road Apple and kinda believed it, before finally coming across the TaylorDesign article, rehabilitating their reputations.

Indeed, the 5200/6200 have the same '040 subsystem outside of the CPU. Here's the 630:

And here's the 6200/5200:


Capella bridges the PPC bus to the '040 bus, so it is new for that computer. There's two minor differences I've seen. Page 3 of the 5200/6200 dev note says it can somehow manage 16-bits per audio channel, whereas the the Q630 can only handle 8-bits (yet elsewhere it seems to say the 5200 can only handle 8-bits).



one minor difference in the address map for the PPC Macs, the 630 ROM is $4000 0000 to $4080 0000, but the PPC has a 603 ROM space from $4000 0000 to $4fff ffff and a ROM 'image' at $ff00 0000 to $ffff ffff.
So yes, very similar. I might have a look at the 190 vs 5300 vs 1400 (though I understand 5300 == 1400) later. Meanwhile, does the IRC have a public link?

<snip> TiBook <snip> extreme nostalgia trip <snip> no trouble at all ripping MP3s while running <lots of apps> CDDB certainly brings it home for me.

TiBook was a legend & yes, the nostalgia aspect is what it's about!

<snip> rips AIFFs at ~16x on average <snip> what I'd expect <snip> can read CDs at 24x <snip> rip settings are for 160k MP3 <snip> getting ~10x

Basically 100x what I was getting from my speedy 166MHz PB1400.

I'm gonna see if the AIFFs I ripped will play nice with MusicMatch and if it'll do the minidisc dubbing trick with them and if so, I'll probably back off from this until the end of the other thing I've been working on.

Yay, first mention of Minidisc! I've just realised that Minidisc uses the UK spelling for 'disc'. How curious! Mac/MD integration also sounds interesting! Is this a hack into a standard recordable minidisc or a MD-data drive? [I think I can locate a Minidisc recorder somewhere.]

[* I never have an abbreviation for Performas, but I've just realised PowerMac and Performa model numbers don't clash, so I can just treat PPC Performas as PowerMacs.]