MP3 player for Mac SE?

[spaceinvader12]

I just put Soundjam on my 5300 tonight and am definitely enjoying MP3 playback; the system is even sort of still useable while doing so, which was a pleasant surprise. Now, I'm wondering about getting music files on my other Mac.

I was wondering if there are any MP3 players for system 6 that would run on a Macintosh SE. I have 7.1 too but mostly use 6.0.8 for everything. I know if possible, it'd probably drag the SE to a crawl, but I'm intrigued to know if anyone has one that works reasonably well. If there's no MP3 player but there is one for another file type I can convert to easily enough that'd be great too.

Not sure if this should be in software or not, I decided compact Mac was more pertinent. So, what do I need to know about audio files on a Mac SE?

 

[just.in.time]

Does QuickTime even install on a 68000 processor?

 

[Byrd]

MP3s on a 68000 do not compute; for higher 030 machines the program MpegDec works if you drop down the quality a little, or is full quality on an '040 (just don't expect to do anything else!)

SoundEdit16 has a plugin to let you uncompress the MP3 file to AIFF for playback, resulting in a much larger file size.  You could also drop the quality of the AIFF (mono 22khz) to make it easier to transfer over.

JB

 

[techknight]

yea base 68000 machines dont have the horsepower to keep up with decoding the MP3 file, AND playing back the sample at the correct rate. 

any machine can decode an MP3 file. even a 68K, BUT... it wont play it back at the rate intended  So if a file is sampled at 44.1Khz, that means each sample needs decompressed/decoded and played at exactly 44,100 times a second. 

that's like trying to watch h264 video on old processors. or DVD on an early G3 without a decoder card. good luck. 

I remember when I first started getting into MP3s and downloading/burning/playing them, it was with a 200Mhz K6 machine at the time and sometimes it would chop up a little bit on startup before it would really get going. I also had a Pentium 133 at the time, and it wouldnt play an MP3 unless it was using software with bare minimum support for it. It couldn't do VU/Visuals, etc... 

 

[jhorvath911]

There was a pretty good discussion about music on old machines on here a couple years ago:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/21189-is-audio-playback-on-a-classic-even-possible/?fromsearch=1

 

[CharlieFrown]

with proper external device like MASPlayer, which is plugged to LPT or serial port  in Amiga World it would possible to play mp3 files on 68000 machines. 

 

[rsolberg]

On the Windows side of things, I have fond memories of WinPlay3 which was a 16-bit Windows 3.x MP3 player. It could optionally play back 44.1KHz files at a lower sampling rate (22050Hz) and in mono or a stereo downmix in order to manage real-time decoding on limited hardware. It actually worked great for some MP3 audiobooks on a 486 SX 33MHz. With a DX/2 66MHz installed, it could handle 44.1KHz, but not stereo. Once I got my AM 5x86 133MHz upgrade installed, it was flawless for 44.1KHz and stereo.

 

[spaceinvader12]

This was all very interesting to hear; I didn't expect it to be feasible, really. Even the 5300 starts lagging a little when working with music playing...

I was mainly curious because a friend asked me if if was possible to play Macintosh Plus (Electronic music called vaporwave for those who don't know) on a compact mac and I couldn't think of an answer. Seeing as it is a modern format, I wasn't expecting it working. Mostly an experimental question. Plus, even 32 kps mp3s tend to be at least a megabyte or two so transfer would be fun. Man, I really need to get a mac network going between my SE and 5300 some time.