From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Dec 11 02:58:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA18433 for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 02:58:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de [139.174.243.252]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA18428 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 02:58:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA02411 for freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:58:15 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from olli) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:58:15 +0100 (CET) From: Oliver Fromme Message-Id: <199812111058.LAA02411@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: sane sound cards? Newsgroups: list.freebsd-hardware Organization: Administration Heim 3 Reply-To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 RZTUC(3) PL2] Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Richard Foulk wrote in list.freebsd-hardware: you wrote (11 Dec 1998 01:52:16 +0100): > I've recently become interested in the mp3 audio stuff and the capability > of playing CD quality music with my system. > [...] > I've recently been using a SoundBlaster AWE 64 Gold, with a 200Mhz > MMX Pentium running 3.0-RELEASE. It works fine while lightly loaded. > But will start dropping audio data as the load climbs a bit. A second > or two of on-board buffering should fix the problem completely, and make > it possible to play mp3s on slower systems. I'm using a Pentium-75 with an AWE64-Value for playing MPEG audio files, it works great. You should use an mp3 player which supports buffering of decoded audio data. For example, mpg123 (http://mpg.123.org/) has an option to specify the buffer size. I usually use 2 Mb (that's about 6 seconds of CD quality audio). As far as I know, there are no soundcards with large audio buffers (the on-board RAM of soundcards is usually used for sample banks and similar things). It wouldn't make much sense anyway, because the soundcard reads its data via DMA from main memory, so the computer's main memory can be used as buffer in a much more flexible way by the audio driver and application software (like mpg123). Regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18/61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany (Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) "In jedem Stück Kohle wartet ein Diamant auf seine Geburt" (Terry Pratchett) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message