Re: MP3 decoder?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

labelas@hotmail.com (Labelas Enoreth) wrote:

>There is an app to convert MP3s on the IIgs itself? Bet it takes a long
time...
>I am still on my Quadra 610, and being as I am still unable to play MP3s
>realtime, when I really want to listen to one I decode it to AIFF and go
>to bed, and then listen to it in the morning if it's done...if I wanted
>the output to be a different sampling rate, bit or channel (like 11khz,
>8-bit, mono instead of 22/16/stereo...to save space)...then I need to
>wait, oh, 16 hours or so. And this is a 25Mhz 040 too...<wish I had a PPC,
>sigh.>
>I wonder how long it takes to do such a thing, have you used it yourself?
>What format audio does it convert to? I'm guessing AIFF, though perhaps
>there is some native GS audio format that would be better suited to a
>10-50-meg file?
>Unless you mean that you convert it on the Mac and then transfer it and
>play it on the IIgs with a utility to play AIFF files or whatnot. Can't
>imagine transferring that giant file would be any fun though.

I've done it before.  In fact, I have quite a collection of large audio
files on my IIGS hard drive.  I use the PC to do the decoding,
down it to about 22Khz or 44Khz at 8-bit mono (I've done both, but
the 44Khz convert less because it slows down on my PC since
I've only got 32MB of RAM and Windows has to generate a huge
swap file to do the processing).  I then save it as a raw, unsigned
format sound file onto an MS-DOS Zip disk.  The Ensoniq's
frequency balance is a little different than my PC's sound card
and my IIGS speakers are also a little different, so I also use
the graphic equalizer to adjust before saving to Zip disk.

I then take the Zip disk over to my IIGS, fire up MUG! and
transfer the file over to an HFS partition.  If you want to do this
sort of thing, use an HFS partition because ProDOS partitions
fill up VERY quickly.

By now, you are probably wondering how the heck does one
play a file larger than IIGS available RAM?  Well, there is a
neat program called Oversampler that you can find on ground
and other Apple II ftp servers.  Just run Oversampler, select
Open, load up the file you transfered, and play it!  The program
spools the music from disk.  You'll of course need to adjust
the playback rate.  Note that you can get Oversampler to
autoset the playback rate by setting the aux type of the file
to the appropriate value.  Most hard drives are plenty fast
for doing 44Khz, but if you have some old model like a Sider
or something, you may only be able to do 22Khz or so.

I could send you a sample conversion if you have your own
ftp space with an incoming folder or I can walk you through
your own conversions need be.

I'm still wondering if Max Jones ever successfully unpacked
the one I sent him.  I had to use GSCII+ to split the file into
several large segments because Max's email could not
take more than 3.5MB attachments.