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MP3Dec on PB 180

J

jwmcfarlin

6502
It works. I used Audion's MP3Pro encoder to make files at 64Kbps Stereo, and then fiddled with the MP3Dec preferences to find an acceptable level of cpu loading. I mean, it's no great shakes compared to how even a slightly later vintage computer could handle .mp3 decompression, but you can work on something at the same time as listening to some music. OS 7.6.1 with 12MB RAM and 24 MB VRAM.

Best,

John

 
back in the day, i couldnt get any MP3 to play on a 68k machine without choppiness or anything. the only machine that played it fairly well was the 040. but it still would skip/chop. of course these are 128k 44,100 sampled stereo MP3s too. finding the program to even decode an mp3 on a 68k machine was even harder to come by than trying to play an mp3 and expecting good performance. So i never persued it any further..

But i applause your effort as it was something i wanted to do. Got any more details or any more info? thanks.

 
Sure! Here's how I did it:

Equipment:

1 PowerBook 1400c G3/250 with 64MB RAM and CD-ROM Module running OS 8.6 and Audion 3

1 External 170MB SCSI Hard Drive

1 Powerbook 180 with 12MB RAM and 12MB Virtual Memory running OS 7.6.1 with MPEGDec installed

Step 1: Rip music. Go to encoder settings under Preferences in Audion. Select the MP3Pro encoder, and select whatever bit rate you think you might get away with. I recommend 64Kbps. You can drop it all the way down to 36KBps if you like. In this example we'll talk about 64KBps encoded files.

Step 2: Transfer Files using the SCSI Hard Drive. One regular length song at 64KBps is going to be about 2MB. So, no, you're not going to get your entire music collection on a stock PB180 hard drive, but if you've put a CF card adapter and a multi-GB card in there, you can get quite a selection set up.

Step 3: Open MP3Dec on the PB180. Go into Preferences and set to: Freq Div 4 (Fastest), Low Quality, Mono, Stream Buffer Max

Step 4: Drag your music file onto the player and press Play.

Results: I am presently listening to Depeche Mode's In Your Room encoded at 64Kbps on a PB180 running on battery power right next to me.

You might ask: "What about the sound quality?" I reply "It's amazing!" Get in the way back machine with me and go back to 1992. The concept that you could even do such a thing would have been pretty astounding. I remember when I first played X-Wing on a PC in 1994 under an evaluation copy of Windows 95 that had enough processor overhead to play a MOD file simultaneously with the game. I was like, "Wow."

You also might ask: "What about multi-tasking?" I reply "Encode some 35KBps MP3s and give it a try." You might get away with running something like SimpleText. I have actually been able to get away with opening Microsoft Word 6 (that memory hog) ahead of time, pressing Play, and then switching over in Finder. Not that I could actually type and have the letters show up on the screen except when occasionally the CPU would burst up through and gasp for air. But that was with a 64KBps file. With a 64KBps file there's just barely enough processor overhead to do something like go over to Finder and select another app, or press the pause key and have it respond. A 96KBps file will actually play, but there's considerable logjam if you're even trying to press stop.

So fiddle around with it and see what you can do.

Best,

John

 
Just a thought:

If the sound output on a 180 is, as I suspect, 8 bit, mono, 22kHz, then a WAV/AIFF file saved with those settings would be 1/8th the size of a CD quality WAV, and should play with almost no CPU overhead. Sure, it won't be as tiny as an MP3 saved with the settings you describe either, but it might be an option for people with sufficient storage who want to play music on older machines while still having some CPU cycles left over for other tasks.

 
Oh, sure. If I am successful in shoehorning in a multi-GB CF card into a PB180, why not go ahead and take up a couple of gigs with uncompressed sound files? That's a great route, too.

Best,

John

 
yea i used to encode songs into AIFF and play those. its just the MP3s i could never play. Hell, a powerPC machine struggled playing streaming MP3s. hehe.

 
While the sound output from the inbuilt speaker is mono, the sound output jack provides an 8 bit stereo signal. It is a great improvement to connect this to a stereo capable audio system to listen music (like a stoneage iPod dock). The start sound is quite impressive with some bass :)

 
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