[ucc] Minutes 15/06

[Nick Bannon]

On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 11:53:44AM +0800, James Cox wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 11:42:34AM +0800, Trent Lloyd wrote:
[...]
> > This, of course, assumes a smarter bass station with enough memory to
> > hold a standard song (usually ~5mb) and can decode all the formats.

You're right - the Airport Express _is_ a bass station. ::-)

Damn, turns out that's an old pun: http://bass-station.net/

> Exactly.
> When your typical base station is powered by a <100 MHz processor, it's
> not going to be able to decode lossily compressed music in real time.

100MHz? That's barely a challenge!

A 40MHz ARM with decent memory access was the rough requirement - any
802.11g base station you can name will beat that handily. The Minitar
802.11b RTL8181's are 200MHz MIPS, the Linksys WRV54G is a 266MHz (!)
ARM IXP425.

Hugo Fiennes pondered that an original iPod wouldn't be able to decode
Vorbis in realtime - he wrote the first Soundtracker player for an 8MHz
ARM2, then put together the eMPEG and now the Rio. Monty reckons an iPod
can, and apparently it can manage 80% of realtime now:
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/ogg-vorbis-on-ipod-a-rebuttal-015738.php

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal