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Minimum hardware req to play/decode mp3s?

C

clutz123

Senior member
Hi,

I just built a little home stereo out of a small monitor and my old P166. Now i'm thinking of doing something for my car to those long trips.

Can a 486/75 laptop decode mp3s ok? or do i need a pentium? any minimum sound card requirements?

Thanks!
 
486/100 would be fine - I had to downgrade sound quality with my old 486/66 - can't say for sure with 486/75
 
You'd probably want to get something pentium level.. or one of those old cyrix chips😛 My 486dx2 66mhz couldn't pull off mp3 decoding, it was sad. i had to run them mono at 1/4 quality🙂 I'm pretty sure a p120 could pull it off.
 
The slowest machine I've ever tested to decode MP3s is on a Pentium-100, and it worked with no problem.

 
My old Pentium 60, 56 megs of RAM would do it no problem. Of course you couldn't do anything else meanwhile.
 
A friend of mine setup a compt to just this for about 100 total( just the box). He had an old 333 Cyrix MII, bought a used super 7 for $30 (egay I think) tossed in 64MB Ram for another 29 (Crucial), bought generic video and sound at a show for $20, and an at case at the same show for $5, and $19 on a teac 32 CDrom. Put that on a kvm switch and it chugs along all day without a hitch on the highest setting fors audio grabber... True it is not the fastest thing, but it makes a solid storage box for backup data, an MP3 decoder, and running diablo2 just long enough for him and us to transfer items from one character to another. Though I would think your laptop would be enough to handle most decoding....
 
486s just won't cut it for mp3 decoding. I tried on an old Intel 486DX4 100MHz with 24MB of RAM and it would pop and skip on any bitrate above 64k. I would probably say a P100 with no multitasking as a bare minimum.
 
Winplay 3 will run mp3's at reduced quality (mono)also (I've been down this route trying to get that old office 486/66 to play mp3's), 486/100's are really the bare minimum to play mp3's at "full" quality - but maybe that 486/75 will be just scraping it??? 🙂
Winamp was 1/4 quality I think? Try Winplay 3 as the lowest grade of CPU player!
Any Pentium class CPU will be more than enough. 🙂
 
clutz123,
Sorry - if u r not familiar with the "downgrading" sounds points u need to look in the options for your chosen player - be it Winamp or whatever.
But for your requirements get the Winplay 3 player - it's better for slower machines than Winamp - sound quality will be much better.
Download both and see for yourself though 🙂
It's about 8 months since I did all this messing about with a 486/66 and then I managed to get hold of a K6-2 500Mhz machine (at work) and then never needed to worry 😉
 
Well..why not just install winamp on the laptop and see how it goes?

But frankly, my suggestion is to not bother with all of that. You don't need a computer to decode mp3z. Just buy a genica or similar cd-r mp3 player and hook it up to your stereo via the cassette tape adapter. I bought a memorex mp3 player from target for about $90 a few months ago. It works great for me. It even plays at 192 which sounds so much better on my stereo than 128. Not to mention that all you need for power is a couple of batteries, just get NiMH rechargeables. And I wouldn't say that you need a screen to play with either while you're driving. I just set mine to random play and let it go.

The new rio player looks awesome. I think it's called the volt. It's about $160 right now.
 
thanks all, yeah i'm looking at the volt and mp3 cd players. i just don't like being able to see 3 lines of text at one time. i don't actually *have* a 486 laptop, i was just wondering how low (as in cheap) i could go, since i can probably buy a 486 lappie for about $100-$150, same price as a volt. looks like i'll want at least a pentium 100
 
oh, and i wanted to put in a larger hard drive, to fit my whole music collection on there. kinda like a cheap nomad jukebox. i suppose i could just wait for prices to drop...
 
problem with old laptops is they probably have lousy lousy soundcards😛 if your unlucky, 8bit soundcard, if your lucky 16 bit, but still lousy quality😛
 
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