try Cubic Player, you might get better results
http://www.cubic.org/player/

The slowest MHz CPU I've successfully played MP3s on was a Pentium 60. Never successfully played one on a 486, even a DX4 100.

MP3 is fairly floating-point intensive, and Pentiums are a lot better at that than 486.

It depends abit on the bitrate of the MP3, but I played already successfully a 128 kBit/s MP3 on a Cyrix 5x86 GP100 in Win98SE / WinAmp 2.91.

I used to play MP3s in native DOS on a 486DX-50, using MPXPlay ( http://mpxplay.sourceforge.net ). I could also play MP3s OK under Windows 3.x using Fraunhofer's own WinPlay ( http://www.sonicspot.com/winplay/winplay.html ). (Y'all DO know who Fraunhofer is, right <grin>?)

Heh, I remember back in the day coming up with an idea for "MP3 albums" of a sort. I copied a bunch of my MP3s to a ZIP drive floppy (WOW! 100MB of MP3s on a *SINGLE* piece of removable media 🤣!), but unfortunately playback stuttered a lot when playing them from a ZIP floppy (due to the relatively low throughput of my parallel port ZIP drive).

lo

i have played mp3s using winamp2 in '95 with a
486dx2 but needed to set the output quality to 1/4 or
something like that. it's an option in the output decoder plugin.

the output sound is bearable but not ideal of course.

winamp2 is around somewhere on one of those
oldapp sites.

bye

In Windows 3.11, using WinPlay3, I was able to play 32 kbps mono mp3s on a 386-40Mhz, Cyrix CX486DLC.

For Windows NT4, using Winamp 2.95, no downscaling of the kbps or monoizing, an Intel DX4-100-WB can just play a 128 kbps mp3 without skipping. It takes about 15 seconds for the player to stop if you hit stop though.

From the Ultimate 486 Benchmark Comparison - FPU Performance, I have tested Mp3 playback for the aforementioned conditions on every CPU above that of the DX4-100 with the exception of the AMD DX4-120 and Cyrix 5x86-80.

You can save a few percentage of the CPU if you set Winamp to not autoscroll the song name and you turn off the audio spectrum display.

I'm not going to install anything above Win3x on that system (only 20MB of RAM), so Winamp will not be tested... I'll try all suggestions received so far a bit later when I get home, and come back with the results 😀.

hi 😀

you should consider upgrading to '95.
everyone is doing it.

it's `easier to use', you 'get more done',
it's `more powerful' and much `more fun' etc
🤣

bye

sklawz wrote:

you should consider upgrading to '95. everyone is doing it. it's `easier to use', you 'get more done', it's `more powerful' and much `more fun' etc

iulianv wrote:

486DX2

iulianv wrote:

only 20MB of RAM

Choke <gasp_gasp_gurgle_gurgle_gurgle> 🤣!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm_lM5X6lJY

😉

at around 13 years ago i used winplay3 to play mp3s on my amd5x86-133 oc 150, and cpu usage is over 80%. dunno if a pci soundcard would be a bit faster than that old realtek isa soundcard.
havn't tried mpxplay, on pentium or newer cpus winamp seems to be a lot more efficient than winplay3, maybe due to its more optimum utilization on pentium's fpu.

Even a Pentium MMX will struggle somewhat with full quality MP3 decoding so I don't really think that a 486 is viable for it.

The best bet for such gimpy hardware would surely be a DOS-based player because it will have the most direct hardware access and considering the age probably be designed for 486 and Pentium playback. But I would not expect 100% MP3 decoding quality on a 486. The decoder will probably be simplified.

Well, Mpxplay came closest, but not close enough... a few more MHz and it would have made it 😀. Docs mention a minimum of 486 DX2-80 to play 128Kbps MP3s, and this seems to be one of those times when docs should be trusted... well, I'll stick to PODP5V83 or AMD DX4-120-WB for this specific task.

Try JukeMP3. I used it on a DX4 100 and had a good experience with it. That program runs in DOS and has a pretty easy to use interface (all keyboard too) and supports playlists.

I wouldn't suggest any Windows programs to try MP3s with. That adds too much overhead to the computer.

I had no problems playing even 13 minute long mp3s on a AM5x86 clocked at 160mhz.

Flac oddly enough, will have LESS problems in playback 😀

Forget about ogg.

OP, what kind of sound card do you have? I used DAMP as well once and had no issues with sound quality.

The computer I used it on had a DX4 100 with a SoundBlaster 16 and DOS 6.2.

leileilol wrote:

Flac oddly enough, will have LESS problems in playback 😀

FLAC is less CPU intensive to decode (and encode for that matter). FLAC must be much less mathematically intensive than MP3/OGG.

FLAC is also apparently the least CPU intensive among its lossless codec peers, according to the comparison on their site.

I should have mentioned the Pentium 60 managed it with no quality reduction, and it was under DOS using DOSamp.

Those 5x86 chips are "almost" Pentium level of FPU performance aren't they? That'd explain why they seem to have more luck than Intel 486 chips.

SquallStrife wrote:

Those 5x86 chips are "almost" Pentium level of FPU performance aren't they?

I wouldn't say that. Sometimes I wish they were pentium level of FPU performance.

By the way, you'll never have seamless transitions between songs on 486s, so no Floyd and live concerts for you.