> At 8:40 Uhr -0500 2.3.2003, Matthew Bryant wrote:
> >I'm thinking no.... Someone can correct me, but I can't image that one
> >of these 68k machines will have enough horsepower to play mp3s. Really
> >your only option is to get a HUGE hard disk, and store your files as
> >waves (.aif) or use one of the early quicktime audio compression
> >codecs. Search on the internet for 68k macs playing mp3.
>
> It's been done on Amigas, and there is in fact a MacOS mp3 player for 040
> Macs. Not that it sounded great - after all, you have only 8 bit audio.

Using optimised assembly, which is what the Amiga clients are, a 40 MHz
68040 can play many mp3s without breakup, but cannot play high quality
bitrates. A 50 MHz 68060 can play all bitrates and still have a little CPU
left for multitasking, and can even play Ogg Vorbis, too.

So a Quadra 840AV can do it, if someone is so inclined to port the Amiga
client to NetBSD. What'd be way cooler, though, is if NetBSD had a
cross-platform interface to the DSPs on any particular port. Then someone
could make an MP3 and an Ogg decoder (and maybe encoder) that used the
DSPs on the AV Quadras and the NeXT machines...

John Klos
Sixgirls Computing Labs