is atari capable of playing MP3 files or using a CD as an ide drive?

[FifthPlayer]

What is the point of listening music through a lofi mono SIO audio? If you want that, just connect your phone or any audio player to SIO audio in and listen. Or use an cassete adaptor with line or BT in in your datarecorder.

 

A game running on the 8-bit could use a batch of MP3 files to play music and sound effects, with the sound coming in through the SIO connector.

[Lynxpro]

Besides the C= 64, The Apple II also has an MP3 card available:

 

http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=21

 

It has an onboard DSP and plays files off a mounted flash drive. So it sidesteps the issues with limited storage space on 8-bit devices.

 

An Atari version of this idea could connect via SIO, have its own SD slot, and pump the audio through the SIO audio line (what the cassette player used to play cassette audio through the Atari).

 

Well, if there's such a board for the C-64 and the Apple //, then one must be made for A8. It's a source of pride, man.

[peteym5]

I was looking at the problem of playing wave digital sound samples and the amount of memory sound samples consume. Trying to figure out ways to reduce it. Currently I pack 4bits + 4bits per each byte, to play back around 5000 Hz. One thought is to look at repeated at same volume level, 4bits for what is sent to pokey, 4 hi bits representing the # of times that is repeated, up to 16. This really depends on how much variance there is in the waves. Not sure how MP3 compresses the wave information.

[Bryan]

Not sure how MP3 compresses the wave information.

 

MP3 compression is a pretty complicated procedure based on psycoacoustics (what we perceive most) as much as pattern detection (prediction and redundancy removal). Low quality samples won't compress well with MP3 because of the extra noise present due to the low resolution.

 

[Yglika]

A silly question regarding mod tracker performace, since I never coded this myself so I don't know how exactly it works:

 

I know it needed at least 286/12 to just "barely" play some 16kHz mods via lpt. How can A8 (or even worse - 1Mhz C64) - which are (I roughly assume) about 30-50 times slower - play 8bit/11kHz over Covox or (4bit) even stock Pokey? Ok, it does not have to mix samples in one channel in sw, but that's just three adds per sample value (providing they were 6 bit most) no?

Edited January 28, 2015 by Yglika

[ctirad]

You can study a C64 CMMS player source here http://digitalaudioconcepts.com/vanessa/hobbies/cmms.html

 

I don't know about any source code for the Atari MOD players/trackers. The NEOtracker or intertia plays at 11-12kHz over Covox.

[fox]

I know it needed at least 286/12 to just "barely" play some 16kHz mods via lpt. How can A8 (or even worse - 1Mhz C64) - which are (I roughly assume) about 30-50 times slower

I don't know how you got these numbers, but back in the 1990s there was a benchmark showing that a 1.77MHz 6502 clearly beats a 4.77MHz 8088 in speed.

[ricortes]

Yglika is referring to a printer port DAC, took a lot more processor time to do the samples. I made R2R DACs for personal use on both the Atari 8 bit and Intel box, they actually worked well.

 

Somebody decapsulated an Adlib chip, not that complicated with the tough stuff done in ROM. Point being if someone was willing to do something similar in an Atari 8 or any 8 bit processor memory, all the tough stuff is precalculated. I think the Apple II used something like a Mockingbird card/similar OPL chip. At some level of design you reach a point of diminishing returns. For instance the look up ROMs data could be done in RAM on and 8 bit since there are only two 256 bit tables. You could still do PCM in software which doesn't leave you much time for anything else.

 

Look at the link under Interna Operation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM3812

 

There would be cheap ways of doing it since most CD ROM players have a head phone jack. You could just get one that has front panel buttons and wire them to a J/S port. I still buy CDs but I think I have to be the last guy on earth that does it and the first thing I do when I get a new CD is rip it to digital form so I can put it on one of my many SD based MP3 players, cell phone, or computer. I've mostly learned to shut up about my habit because after I drop $14 for a CD invariably someone in the under 40 years old tells me "You know you could have downloaded that for free."

 

I bought two of my grandkids stocking stuffer MP3/4 players one or two years ago. Something like 4 gigs storage, LCD screen for watching movies/MP4s, built in camera for pictures and video recording. They were about 1/2 the size of a cellphone. <$20. Kind of tough to beat that price with anything on an Atari. It really becomes just about bragging rights.

Edited January 28, 2015 by ricortes