Re: MP3 Player for the //gs (Dumb question right?)

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Liam Busey wrote:

>The IIgs doesn't have the power to play MP3 files real time. However the
>IIgs has no problem with WAV files. One of my ROM3 machines is setup for
>this.
>
>You'll want to use a more modern machine to do the conversion. Supertimer
>wrote a nice article on how to do this a couple years ago. Google groups
>should turn that up fairly easily. It invovled converting the MP3 to a WAV
>file, resampling to frequency that would minimize noise from the DOC, and
>saving as IIRC a 4bit mono WAV file. The WAV files can be played off a
>harddrive with Oversampler. The resulting WAV files tend to be between 5 and
>10MB for a typical length song, quite reasonable for most of us with a
>harddrive less than 10 years old. This process is actually a lot easier than
>it sounds.
>
>Some may turn their nose up at the resulting quality of the WAV file. With
>my non-audiofile ears I have trouble telling the difference between them and
>the original MP3. Your mileage may very. If you're going to play them
>through the internal speaker it's really a non-issue.

It is possible to hear the difference between 4-bit audio resolution and 5-bit
resolution on the internal speaker, though it is much more obvious with a
pair of headphones or an external speaker.

Even the classic 8-bit Apple II's can play 5-bit sound with my software
DAC.  The issue with 8-bit Apples is the amount of RAM that can be
easily used.  My SOUND.EDITOR uses only the main 48KB for program
and sound samples, and can accomodate sounds up to about 1.8 seconds
long (plenty for game sounds, event sounds, etc.).  There is another
program, IISOUND, written by Philip Lamb using my DAC that plays
longer sound files from an AUXRAM card (but there are little audible
pops where it switches banks).

It is amazing what can be done with the 1MHz, 8-bit Apple II.  ;-)

-michael

Check out amazing quality sound for 8-bit Apples on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/