I’ve sat on this problem for a while; it’s been so for months. So here’s the deal: I downloaded several MP3s, to wean me off of RealPlayer files. I tried to play the files (the MP3s, not the RealPlayer), and they sounded slow and garbled.
My theory is that my 166 processor (dinosaur roars in the background) is too slow to play a nice 128 kbps MP3 while running Windows and G-d-knows what else I run in my spare time. Am I right, and whether or not I am, is there a solution to my problem?
i’m not sure, but it works for me, go to the site that you normaly download your mp3s and download a mp3 player. it might work.
I think a 166 is plenty enough power, I could almost play them on my 486-66 (but not quite). I seem to recall that any Pentium, even the very first ones, could play MP3s.
You didn’t say which player you tried. I suggest Winamp, which can be found at http://www.winamp.com .
Another good one is Sonique, which is at http://www.sonique.com .
Since it does do something I have to assume you have the codec installed. My next test would be to see if it does the same thing with all levels of compression and with all players. Which are you using? Before you indtall any new one I would try the ones you already have. You should have SNDREC32 and Media player (maybe even two versions of this).
It could well be your hardware is not up to speed. try mono files with lower bitrate. My 233MMX copes with sound fine but fast bitrate video becomes choppy.
I use plain, old Winamp, and have Windows Media installed. What is a ‘codec’? I assume, from the context, that it is merely the program that plays the file, but I have a long, sad history of being dead wrong. I have SNDREC32 on this electronic beast; that doesn’t seem to be any problem. Since Napster has gone belly-up, I’ve been using AltaVista MP3/Audio search (I am, after all, only a humble savage), and they don’t tell you they bitrate. Even a 128-kbps MP3 is slow on my machine. Is there a way to convert that to say, a 96-kbps MP3 (I have a few soundclips with bitrates in that neighorhood; they play perfectly)?
OK so it seems the problem is indeed the slow computer. You can convert files to a slower bitrate. If they are .MP# then i am not an expert as I convert them all to .WAV (note that both these types use the MP3 compression). What I do is convert them all to WAV file type and then you can easily convert it to any bit rate you want by just clicking on “save as”. You can use SNDREC32 or Media Player for this. To convert MP3 to WAV you can find several programs online. I do not know if there are programs which would convert MP3 to MP3 with slower bitrate directly but I prefer to use WAV as it is marginally more efficient.
To clarify: .WAV’s can use MP3 compression, but not all .WAV files do. .WAV files have been around for a long time (since before MP3), and many are just raw samples with no compression.
My computer is a 166 with only 32 ram, and it has no problem playing mp3s, including the 128 and 160 bitrate ones. I know a 166 is slow for the games that I want to play on it, but I can’t imagine why it would have trouble with mp3s. I really think it must be winamp or the files themselves.
If you’re downloading those mp3s with Netscape, that might be corrupting them. IE doesn’t mess them up, not sure if Netscape still does, but I know it did, and there was a program called Uncook that would fix the files.
First though, try going into the options on winamp and changing what percentage of processor power it uses. Go to options, choose preferences, choose audio i/o, and then set the processor priority class to something other than what it is right now. It might be set to idle, so put it up to high. That’s what I have mine set at, and nothing interrupts an mp3 except copying something else from the same cd, or trying to open Word or Excel. I hope that works 