[ On Monday, January 28, 2002 at 20:23:02 (-0800), Glendon Gross wrote: ]
> Subject: /dev/audio working on SS2(!)
>
> 
> To my delight, after building a kernel with sound support enabled
> for the SS2 and rebuilding all devices, I am able to cat
> files to /dev/audio and I can hear the sound!

Can you record anything with 1.5?  I've been unable to record with my
SS-1+ using a newer kernel (1.5W).  See my post to this list about a
week ago....

> Now I'm going to see if I can use software like mpg123 to decode
> files.... I'm not sure what the limitations are, but at 25 Mhz I won't
> be too surprised if compressed audio is a challenge.

mpg123 does work, even on an SS-1+.  I can play a mono MP3 encoded at
64kbit/s, with a sampling of 44.1KHz, even while running X11 and typing
this message, though moving the mouse causes skipping, especially if the
window manager has to page in (over NFS -- this is a diskless
workstation).

	$ mpg123 -m --8bit -r 8000 --au /dev/audio qq061001f.mp3     
	High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2 and 3.
	Version 0.59r (1999/Jun/15). Written and copyrights by Michael Hipp.
	Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
	THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
	
	Playing MPEG stream from qq061001f.mp3 ...
	MPEG 1.0 layer III, 64 kbit/s, 44100 Hz mono
	Warning, flexibel rate not heavily tested!

Running with '-v' even works with a local xterm, though then I can't
type to a remote X client or move the mouse without causing lots of
skipping, and this is with a monochrome bwtwo framebuffer (i.e. not
moving very many bits to draw on the screen).

However even without moving the mouse (only swisswatch as well as a
local and couple of remote xload's ticking away), I get constant
skipping when playing 128kbit/s streams.  Since your SS-2 is hopefully
at least 40 MHz (not 25 MHz like this SS-1+) it should be able to do
just fine (assuming you have enough memory and not too much else hitting
the CPU), though of course what you hear isn't going to be very pleasing
-- it's something like listening to hold music on the telephone, even
with a good set of headphones or a wonderful external speaker it's still
tinny.
	
I really only want the local NAS server to work, but with NetBSD the NAS
server (voxware) uses liboss instead of /dev/audio and that part seems
broken -- I only get noise.  See my previous post for more details.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods@acm.org>;  <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;  <woods@robohack.ca>
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