5 ms·
Spoiler: it's hardware. And the opening line sounds like a challenge: > Given that the much more powerful 16-bit Amiga 500 is unable to play MP3’s,
by detrites 4y ago
Spoiler: it's hardware.
And the opening line sounds like a challenge:
> Given that the much more powerful 16-bit Amiga 500 is unable to play MP3’s,
- technothrasher 4y ago> Spoiler: it's hardware. Yeah, this isn't MP3 on a C64. It's a C64 controlling an external MP3 player.
- Tuna-Fish 4y agoI think mp3 playback requires a reasonably fast multiply instruction, and the original 68000's 70 cycles per mul @ 7MHz, or 100000 muls per second doesn't qualify.
- detrites 4y agoSome info here, claims a 68020 at 50Mhz (@10 MIPS) can just pull it off: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=78994 https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=78994 Might mean an A500 (@1.4 MIPS) could do it if you were happy waiting 10-15 minutes for the audio of a 3 min mp3 to begin.
- Someone 4y agoI don’t think a stock A500 could do that, having 1MB RAM, max. Where would you store 3 minutes of uncompressed audio? At CD quality, that’s about 30MB.
- detrites 4y agoGiven the likely output quality you'd probably choose something like 32Kbps encoding for the mp3, which should fit 3 mins in 720KB. (Not sure how it'd affect CPU requirements?) It's not that bad-sounding: http://www.knowzy.com/Computers/Audio/Digital_Audio_Files/audio_files/Israel_Kamakawiwo%27ole-2001-Alone_In_IZ_World-10-Over_the_Rainbow-Short-32Kbps.mp3 http://www.knowzy.com/Computers/Audio/Digital_Audio_Files/au...
- Someone 4y agoBut that machine cannot decompress that at real time. The comment I replied to said that would be solvable by adding a few minutes of buffering, but that requires a buffer to hold uncompressed audio.
- Razengan 4y agoWow, how far we have come. MOD is superior to MP3 anyway :)
- pixelfarmer 4y agoI think a stock Atari Falcon is capable of playing mp3 thanks to the DSP (56001), but it still isn't a walk in the park even with that (in combination with a 68030 as the main CPU).
- lokedhs 4y agoIt took many years until MP3 decoding on a stock Falcon was possible. While the machine was generally available, there was no MP3 implementation, and the belief was that it was impossible.
- ajross 4y agoThe C64 didn't have any kind of PCM output, so it basically has to be. Early SID chips had a voltage glitch you could use for 1-bit ("speaker-style") output, and a few games used it for some effects. But you couldn't get music out of it in any real sense.
- classichasclass 4y agoFour-bit (the amplitude of the "click" caused by the SID's voltage leak is proportional to the volume, which is four-bit). There are many demos that used it for digitized music, and Rob Hubbard's Skate or Die! intro tune used it as a practical fourth voice. See also the original Covox Voice Master.
- pflanze 4y agoThere are also other techniques (found after the computer's heyday), up to 8 bits 44.1 KHz: https://www.livet.se/mahoney/c64-files/Musik_RunStop_Technical_Details_by_Pex_Mahoney_Tufvesson_v2.pdf https://www.livet.se/mahoney/c64-files/Musik_RunStop_Technic... PS. it might not really be 8 bits, but only 93 or 107 different values (6..7 bits). More details: https://csdb.dk/forums/?roomid=11&topicid=103092&showallposts=1 https://csdb.dk/forums/?roomid=11&topicid=103092&showallpost...
- mdp2021 4y ago> in any real sense I would be sure that if Tim Follin decided to just use that, he would have "made full sense" (cpr. "Agent X" and "Chronos", ZX Spectrum).
- muziq 4y agoAs fully signed up C64/SID fanboy, Chronos on the Speccy is probably my favourite piece of music in any game.. Absolute 1-bit sheer heaven..