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Metzen · Aug 27, 2002, 04:41 AM

Ok, I was interested in aquiring a MP3 player that didn't make my poor 400Mhz DVSE iMac feel like it was running a race barefoot on pokey rocks.

So here's what I did. I got mpg123, MacAmp Lite and iTunes (Sound Check, EQ turned off, iTunes window closed) and had them all play 3 different MP3's of the same song (Good Charolette - Say Anything) @ 192 bitrate.

To remove as many variables as possible I quit the finder and any and all applications that can be exited without going through the Terminal. I'm displaying my first screen to show all the running processes, then just the applications processes after that with an average at the end, negating the highest 2 scores and the lowest 2. Samples taken by top were 20 every 10 seconds. (top -d -s10 -l20)

Code:
Processes:  33 total, 2 running, 1 stuck, 30 sleeping... 102 threads   01:49:19
Load Avg:  0.73, 0.73, 0.67     CPU usage:  23.1% user, 76.9% sys, 0.0% idle
SharedLibs: num =   99, resident = 23.8M code, 1.96M data, 6.65M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 2410, resident = 42.4M + 5.44M private, 34.2M shared
PhysMem:  42.8M wired, 84.4M active,  149M inactive,  276M used,  236M free
VM:  955M + 46.9M   6929(6929) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

  PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
  471 top          0.0%  0:00.25   1    14    15   176K   360K   428K  1.62M 
  465 tcsh         0.0%  0:00.27   1    24    16   476K   688K   956K  5.74M 
  462 mpg123       0.0%  0:13.11   3    69    29   808K   524K  1.17M  3.37M 
  398 tcsh         0.0%  0:00.37   1    24    16   468K   688K   940K  5.74M 
  363 Terminal     0.0%  0:38.10   7   124   181  2.45M  8.44M  5.98M  58.8M 
  362 MacAmp Lit   0.0%  3:51.79   6   130   359  12.4M  13.9M  19.3M  79.1M 
  356 hdid         0.0%  0:01.30   1    11    36   688K   372K   664K  1.96M 
  318 SecurityAg   0.0%  0:01.29   2    87    81  1.28M  6.93M  3.22M  54.0M 
  291 c++filt2     0.0%  0:00.03   1    12    15    64K   364K   268K  1.31M 
  290 iTunes       0.0% 59:08.41   9   147   270  9.05M  16.3M  14.2M   111M 
  283 automount    0.0%  0:00.03   2    11    19   164K   424K   316K  2.14M 
  263 SystemUISe   0.0%  3:18.12   4   123   145  2.03M  7.04M  3.81M  56.4M 
  262 Dock         0.0%  0:27.26   3    98   133  2.52M  8.91M  6.13M  54.7M 
  252 pbs          0.0%  0:02.69   1    29    25  1.17M   600K  1.77M  18.4M 
  249 loginwindo   0.0%  0:05.11   7   144   152  2.57M  6.44M  4.81M  42.2M 
  245 cron         0.0%  0:00.10   1     9    16    72K   352K   152K  1.52M 
  237 SecuritySe   0.0%  0:00.31   2    29    22   324K   632K   664K  2.69M 
  220 inetd        0.0%  0:00.00   1     9    14    52K   348K   116K  1.26M 
  213 coreservic   0.0%  0:01.26   3    52    32   832K   452K  1.07M  2.75M 
  200 lookupd      0.0%  0:01.97   2    11    20   224K   580K   476K  2.39M 
  193 netinfod     0.0%  0:00.36   1     8    19   380K   436K   536K  1.79M 
  171 CrashRepor   0.0%  0:02.47   2    42    38  1.38M   476K  1.91M  11.2M 
  165 syslogd      0.0%  0:00.22   1     8    14    84K   340K   156K  1.26M 
  137 configd      0.0%  0:01.70   4    84   129   568K  1.05M  1.57M  3.91M 
  111 autodiskmo   0.0%  0:01.01   2    46    19   200K   448K   400K  2.28M 
   70 dynamic_pa   0.0%  0:00.00   1    10    16    64K   340K   104K  1.27M 
   67 update       0.0%  0:02.53   1     8    14    48K   336K   100K  1.25M 
   65 Window Man   0.0% 16:03.33   3   204   339  4.24M  10.3M  14.5M  26.2M 
   63 ATSServer    0.0%  0:20.09   1    34    72   604K  5.64M  3.01M  50.0M 
   42 kextd        0.0%  0:00.00   2    16   128  2.49M   352K  1.79M  4.16M 
    2 mach_init    0.0%  0:01.83   1    81    13    56K   352K   140K  1.27M 
    1 init         0.0%  0:00.01   1    20    13    40K   348K   248K  1.26M 
    0 kernel_tas   0.0%  9:42.14  24     0     -      -      -  36.1M   342M 
    0 idle_threa   0.0% 91:25.78

And now for the scores:

Code:
    iTunes      mpg123      MacAmp Lite
    21.3%       13.1%       12.6%
    15.8%       13.5%       12.0%
    22.2%       14.6%       11.9%
    15.7%-      14.9%-      13.0%-
    20.8%       13.9%       12.6%
    17.5%       12.9%       11.4%
    23.9%-      13.2%       12.4%
    16.0%       14.1%       12.3%
    20.3%       14.8%-      12.1%
    16.9%       12.5%       11.8%
    20.5%       13.9%       11.7%
    17.5%       11.1%-      11.9%
    19.0%       11.7%       14.6%-
    15.7%-      13.0%       13.0%
    23.2%-      10.8%-      11.3%
    19.0%       13.6%       11.1%-
    20.4%       13.3%       10.8%-
    22.3%       13.1%       12.2%
    18.3%       14.5%       11.4%

avg 19.2%       12.7%       12.1%

Final Analysis:
mpg123 -- FREE Command Line player.
mpg123 is extremely senstive (read: skips alot under normal use) giving it one sad face, having a unintutive tools gives it one more sad face, but scores up one smiley on low CPU usage.

mpg123:

iTunes -- FREE GUI player.
Being free scores it one smiley face, being a big resource hog scores it one sad face having a great interface scores it one cool face.

iTunes:

MacAmp Lite -- ShareWare MP3 Player
14 Day Trial after which you have to pay $12 to register to continue using it - meh, that's what shareware's about.
MacAmp scores a cooleys in:
low cpu with a GUI. Scores 1 smiley for intutive, non-obtrusive interface for MP3 player, and one sad face for lack of ID3 tag support up to some versions of v2 (either v2.3 & 2.4 or just 2.4 I haven't bothered to check). Either way it's annoying.

MacAmp Lite

(s)macintosh · Aug 27, 2002, 05:04 AM

I must admit, the smiley face "ratings" cracked me up

Gul Banana · Aug 27, 2002, 07:11 AM

That's very interesting.. I consistently get far lower scores for mpg123 (around 7 or 8 percent), though I still use iTunes. Otherwise I'd pretty much agree with you, though you didn't think of Audion or Mint Audio - both very similar to MacAmp Lite in terms of your rating categories.