audio compression formats for a 486

[emazur]

My 486 laptop, 100 mhz I think, is able to play mp3's using winamp if I cut the output quality to 22 khz mono, and mp2's can play at 22 khz stereo. So I'm looking for a format that I can play at 32 khz stereo or above (44 khz stereo is best of course). Compression level doesn't need to be very high, but would prefer under 500kbps. Any recommendations?

[emazur]

One that works pretty well is good ol' MSADPCM, I can get get full 44 khz stereo at 355 kbps. But it's an old format, so I figure there's gotta be something better

[scharfis_brain]

what about MPEG 1 Layer 1 audio?
(MP2 = mpeg 1 layer 2
MP3 - mpeg 1 layer 3)

I think, TMPGenc can produce it.

[Mug Funky]

musepack? it's speed optimised to hell and back.

also performs slightly better than mp3 as far as transparency/bitrate works (it's a matter of debate as to whether it outperforms the other modern codecs in this area as well... my gut says "yes, but for how long?", but really it can't be proven without months of testing).

go to www.rarewares.org and follow the mpc links. there's a few winamp plugs for it, and a bunch of encoders.

[Teegedeck]

486s are really awfully slow... I remember that in Winamp I had to select lowest accuracy and downmix to mono when I wanted to listend to a 128 kbps MP3 on my DX-66...

So MPEG layer 1 might be the idea.

[emazur]

I'm having an awful time trying to find an mp1 audio encoder. I didn't see how to do it in TMPEGenc, I figured cdex or dbpoweramp could do it but didn't see the option in those either. Anyone know anything concrete? I've already searched for more time than it's probably worth

[Nic]

Have you tried MPEG Layer 2? Encoders like toolame are common, and it might work ok on a 486 ??

Just a guess,
-Nic

ps
You should be able to get MP3 to work with a really good 100% assembly player...I used to know one, but I've forgotten the name and can't find it on google :(

[mf]

486 never got higher than 66Mhz :). Trivia info: AMD made the fastest 486s, until Intel came along with the Pentium.

[Nic]

Don't u remember the 486 DX-4 100Mhz ?!

-Nic

[mf]

Well, a while ago I recalled something about a 100Mhz 486, but then my vague memory got crushed by somebody saying they never got higher than 66Mhz. So now I'm confused.

[Nic]

They were definitely in existence...my mate at school had one and I remember fixing them in a summer job when I was young. Fond memories. :)

Both IBM and Intel made one it appears :)
http://cpu-museum.de/?m=IBM&f=486
http://cpu-museum.de/?m=Intel&f=80486DX

Anyway, Im getting very OT. Sorry :)

[dragongodz]

ok back on topic shall we. :)

your best bet is to find older players that dont have all the bells and whistles of modern players. so try searching some freeware software collections and you may find something usable.

[Mug Funky]

I remember fixing them in a summer job when I was young. Fond memories.

aah.. i did a similar job. ex-government computers going out to schools. there were a few 486 dx-4 doobies laying around (and to confuse things there were also pentium 66 and 90's)

12" monitor bowling.. that's fun.

back on topic... i'm thinking if winamp can't do it, there's not much out there that will. foobar2000 has less overhead apparently, but i always have SSRC going in realtime with it (my soundcard resamples... grrr). certainly try it out, as when you finally find an encoder you can interface it with foobar2000.

[m99]

I had an 486-DX4 100MHz which could play mp3 44kHz stereo, had to do some optimizing and tweaking of Win98 and BIOS to do so, maybe I overclocked it, don't remember.
The fastest 486-cpu's was AMD 486DX4 133MHz and Cyrix 586(486) 120MHz.

[JoeShrubbery]

Originally posted by emazur
I didn't see how to do it in TMPEGenc

Load up TMPGEnc, blank the video source and select your audio source. Hit the settings button, that should bring up the audio options dialog. From there you can set the stream type (layer1 or layer2), sampling frequency (32, 44.1, or 48khz, if different than source it resamples), bitrate, and a few other things.

[Kedirekin]

486 DX4-100's did (do) indeed exist. I still have mine, circa 1991 if memory serves. It was pretty sweet for the day. I'll bet if I plugged it in it'd even still work - if the 13-year-old hard drive will still spin up. Wonder how slow encoding would be on *that*. :D

DAMP claims that it'll play back MP3 on a 486 DX4-100.


Oops! Memory does not serve. I just checked - I bought my DX4 on 15 June, 1994. It cost $2,978 - LOL.

[gircobain]

Originally posted by m99
I had an 486-DX4 100MHz which could play mp3 44kHz stereo, had to do some optimizing and tweaking of Win98 and BIOS to do so, maybe I overclocked it, don't remember.
The fastest 486-cpu's was AMD 486DX4 133MHz and Cyrix 586(486) 120MHz.
My first pc was an AMD 586 133MHz 8mb RAM (actually I still have the cpu, mobo and mem stick laying around somewhere). I remember I used to have a hard time playing mp3's on it :/

[Soulhunter]

You could also use lossless compression methods like WavPack (http://www.wavpack.com/)... ;)

Dont know if it runs on your machine, on mine I get about 1% CPU usage !!!


Btw, my first PC was a 75 MHz Pentium I - 8MB Ram - 1GB HD box... :D


Bye

[Neo Neko]

While we are on nostalgia mode does anyone know if I can play such MP3 on my working Timex Sinclar[z-80 spectrum computer]? :p Or for that matter I have a perfectly good 286 with 20Mb HD in good order with working 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy drives and disks!! My first Pentium was a 60Mhz packard bell which they claim they never sold. Although they have the model on list but it did not sell till almost a year and a half later. Basically it was denial on their part to reduce the dammages to them for using the first flawed pentium chips. :p And yes there were 100Mhz+ 486 cpus. [the origin of the clock speed multiplyer jumper in the consumer market. IIRC] The bus on the MOBO was still only 66Mhz to the memory and even slower on the ISA and PCI BUS. So it was kinda like putting a high performance engine in something like a yugo or geo metro. Watch it rev! put put put wheeze screeeeeeeeeeeee

Since it is a 486 system what about something like Knoppix? Can you boot from the cdrom or from the floppy to a cdrom? You can squeez that extra bit of performance by using a minimal linux install with mpg123 or the like. The good and bad news is that either your hardware is definatly supported or likely never will be. But it might be something to try. I don't think geexbox or movix would work though. IIRC they require pentium architecture or better [AMD :p ] to run.

[int 21h]

How about something like MADPlay? Its just an optimized decoder with no GUI... if you force it to 16bit output, it might be ok.

[m99]

Originally posted by gircobain
My first pc was an AMD 586 133MHz 8mb RAM (actually I still have the cpu, mobo and mem stick laying around somewhere). I remember I used to have a hard time playing mp3's on it :/

Maybe I overclocked it to 120MHz (don't remember), there was also huge gains by optimizing the memory- and cache-settings in the BIOS, and I was using a really trimmed down version og Win98 by using 98lite and others tweaks.

[Sirber]

Use a player with less GUI stuff, like foobar.

www.foobar2000.com

System requirements:
OS:
Windows 9X version - runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME
Windows NT version - runs on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP

note: You can run Windows 9x version on a Windows NT based OS, but unicode-related features will not function properly
note: Very old versions of Windows 95 or NT 4.0 may need msvcrt.dll to be additionally installed
CPU:
200 MHz, AMD K5 or Pentium or equivalent (500MHz Athlon or Pentium III recommended)
RAM:
32 MB
Display:
800x600 resolution

hum... forget it :D

[KpeX]

As mentioned by int21h and others, mad-based decoders usually require the least processor power. MAD plugins are available for all the popular audio players as well, or CLI.

As Neo Neko mentioned, linux would probably help minimize power too. The recent CD-based distributions are really simple and brainless, require nothing written to the harddrive, and the hardware detection is quite good. My personal favorite is Overclockix (http://overclockix.octeams.com/).

You could also take a look at some of the old en/decoders on Really Rare Wares (http://www.rjamorim.com/rrw/).

[Ryokurin]

http://www.geocities.com/mpxplay/

this is a dos based mp3 player, it also works in a windows 9x dos window (also works in 2k/xp, although it drags the system while running) it states a dx4-100 as the minimum. I wouldnt try AAC, AC3, DTS or anything like that however...

[emazur]

thanks everyone for the replies. but i think this has been alot more trouble than it's worth. mp1 didn't seem to take up less cpu. using the winamp MAD plugin in place of the default mp3 plugin helped. I can play 44 khz mono mp3's... for about 90 seconds until it starts skipping badly. 44 khz stereo can go for about 30 seconds. I think the key to getting successful playback lies in the buffer. I'm able to achieve that playback only b/c I cranked up the buffer values bigtime. maybe if there was an optimized wav-out plugin... Or some player that continiously "refreshed" the buffer (I probably don't know what I'm talking about there). I don't have much desire left to search, I've done more searching and configuring than it's worth I think. BTW, this Toshiba laptop is 75 mhz, not 100.

[Sirber]

What about a linux solution? Small kernel, commandline mp3 player :) I would use gentoo, since you can produce an OS 20-50% faster since it's compiled for your machine.

[emazur]

Well I don't know crap about linux. I'm aware of the bootable linux cd's, but I intend to stream the mp3's of a cd so that won't work. Or formating my hd, installing linux and hoping the player might work goes back to the "it's too much trouble" issue. Especially since I don't have the win95 installation disks anymore for this laptop in case I wanna go back.

[The Belgain]

I think mpc will be your best bet. Lower CPU usage decoding than mp3s. And better quality too.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by emazur
Well I don't know crap about linux. I'm aware of the bootable linux cd's, but I intend to stream the mp3's of a cd so that won't work. Or formating my hd, installing linux and hoping the player might work goes back to the "it's too much trouble" issue. Especially since I don't have the win95 installation disks anymore for this laptop in case I wanna go back.

What makes you think that. Geexbox for instance once booted from the CD runs basically independant of the CD. Allowing you to load other CDs.

[smok3]

definately try musepack (mpc) for lossy and maybe flac if you wanna try lossless.

[avih]

why do u intend playing from the cd? won't copying 70M (appx 1 cd worth mp3) to the hd and play it from there?? worth the trouble, and ultimately, faster solution that anything else. would that work for u?

[emazur]

I looked at the geexbox page but it says you're required to have a mb that can boot off a cd. This laptop won't do that. It also says pentium class cpu is required. Yes, I suppose I could copy the files from cd to hd, though it's a small hd and currently there's only about 72 meg left (maybe I could clear off some crap).

[Selur]

You might want to try this:
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Pit/3173/mp3/mobile.html

It's a linux+MPG123 boot floppy disc which runs on a 486@66Mhz.
(did test this myself a while back and it worked fine)

also check out:
http://rzr.online.fr/docs/media/audio.htm

Cu Selur

Ps.: isn't this a nice post for pos #666? :D