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Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:04PM (#26677857)
There was a program called "amp" that used fast integer math.

I compiled it on an SGI Indigo running at 30Mhz and it would play up to 256kbps files using 90 percent of CPU.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by marcodiego on Friday April 02, 2021 @10:53PM (#26678072)
MIPS at 30Mhz is comparable to contemporary pentiums at much higher frequency of the era. The Indigo probably had faster memory, io and bigger caches than pc's mere mortals could buy. The comparison is simply not fair.

But this program called "amp"... I'm very curious to see if it could be compiled to run on a recent machine.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @12:16AM (#26678406)
Let me see if I can track it down...

I agree with you, but 30Mhz! That is a very low clock for 256kbps decode.

MIPS did very significantly outperform Intel at that time.

http://www.mp3-tech.org/programmer/sources/amp-0_7_6.tgz

Found it.

An Indigo sat in the office for a time playing tunes from an NFS share we would populate. I eventually took it home to do the same thing. I forget how I parted ways with that old box.

I am not inclined to build it at the moment, though it may well make for a great micro controller project one day.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by marcodiego on Saturday April 03, 2021 @10:23AM (#26681311)
Nice! Still compiles with a minor modification: added a break on the default case of a switch. Time signature is wrong when playing though.

Edit: Fixed: add "frequency = frequency/2;" after the comment /* Set the output frequency */ in file audioIO_Linux.c

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @11:26AM (#26681793)
Cool! I liked the quality output of that player at the time. Highs were clean.

Does it still hold up?

Maybe I will build it just for grins myself. Thanks for the tips.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by marcodiego on Saturday April 03, 2021 @11:57AM (#26682035)
I can't critically evaluate the quality since I have no high quality mp3 nor Hi-Fi audio devices. An old recording of mine http://marcodiegomesquita.tripod.com/rda.mp3 sounded with very unsaturated bass; which is good, I think I recorded/mastered it wrongly or the software I used at the time decoded it like amp decodes it. It actually sounds really good with amp.

But yes, it uses very little cpu. Maybe less than dosamp.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @12:19PM (#26682232)
I had similar experiences. Yeah, I need to build it now. Have a few tracks that often have watery highs, just not crisp. Amp played them great.

Maybe I will play your track after the family activities. Edit: Except access denied, lol. No worries.

Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by marcodiego on Saturday April 03, 2021 @01:00PM (#26682647)
Hugh of death likely. I can download it correctly from here: https://marcodiegomesquita.tripod.com/
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @07:19PM (#26685609)
Cool, thanks.
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by anthk on Saturday April 03, 2021 @07:28AM (#26680124)
Slackware still has amp.
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @11:30AM (#26681817)
What version?
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by anthk on Saturday April 03, 2021 @03:18PM (#26683882)
Slackware? 14.2
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by ddingus on Saturday April 03, 2021 @07:20PM (#26685613)
I was wondering about amp. Maybe a newer one exists? Sorry to be unclear.
Re:Windows 95 – How Does It Look Today? by marcodiego on Sunday April 04, 2021 @11:12AM (#26690055)
It is available from debian archive: http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/a/amp/