How to play MP3 on your Amiga!

How can I listen to some MP3 on my Amiga then ?

Stage 1: Getting an MP3 to play

First of all, you need an MP3 file to listen (who would say that? Gee!). There are plenty of them on the Internet, but the best place to get MP3 is from dedicated MP3 FTP sites. So, task 1 is finding an MP3, and for that you need a search engine. One of the best in my opinion is the Chaos Search engine. So, you just type what you want on the search box, and off you go! You should be presented with some matched files. Now, to get access on those, you need an FTP client. The best 2 avaiable are :

AmFTP by Vapor Software
AmiFTP by Magnus Lilja

AmiFTP may provide the best results, so use it instead.
Now that you have an FTP client properly installed (it's your job to install it), you need to add the FTP site details you found on Chaos Search to the FTP proggy. Since AmiFTP is the best for the job, here's a quick detailed snapshot :

The GUI is self explanatory... the name may be anything of your choice. The site must be the address or IP number from the site found by Chaos. The port MAY not be always 21, so be sure to check it. If the site doesn't accept anonymous users, you must type in the user and password given by Chaos on the relevant spaces. This is the essential for it to work. On the extras side, Auto-CD to drawer specifies the drawer in the site the client should go to when connecting. The Download to Path is the place where your downloads will go. You can also choose the operating system, but it should be left at Unix. You can also enable proxy access through the checkbox (for speedup). Finally, the rest of the options are specially for Aminet sites...

AmiFTP site configuration

If you choose to use AmFTP, here's a quick view of it's GUI:

You can fill the profile gadget with any description that fits best the site you're going to connect to. Just fill in the essential bits in the relevant spaces, and don't forget to check if the port number is 21. And always set the compression checkbox off, as most sites don't like it.
AmFTP site configuration

Getting past this, you just connect to the site. If your lucky, you'll just get in it at the first attemp. But most likely, the server will be full of people, and so you must keep retrying to connect until you're in. Once that happens, just choose the files to download, and get them!
Beware of Ratio sites though... these require an upload of yours first before you are allowed to download anything!

Stage 2: Playing the MP3 itself

Now that you have your MP3 ready to listen, you need a proper MP3 player. The best ones are :

Mpega
SongPlayer
AmigaAmp (PowerPC and 680x0 users)
Diamond GUI (requires Mpega above)

You need at least a 68030 processor to play MP3 in real time, altough a 040 and above is highly recommended. If you have the 68030/040 processor, I advise you to get the Mpega / Diamond GUI combo. Other than that, you may get whatever you want.
Install the software correctly, and now you're real close to test your MP3 file! When installing Mpega, remember NOT TO USE the FPU versions for faster results!! These are slower, but more accurate, however the normal versions are enough.
If you have a 68030/40, click here. If you have a 68060/PPC, click here instead.

68030/040 users do this:
You're not going to be able to play an MP3 in real time, so we'll have to tweak the quality to hear something continuous.
If you're using a 030, you can only play MP3 in real time with crap quality. So, if you're using Diamond GUI, choose low quality and frequency division 4.

If you're using the Mpega executable, just write the following command line :
mpega -d4 -q0 -T -i mp3file
If even then it plays with jams, use:
mpega -d4 -q0 -T -m -i mp3file
Now, if you have good ears, you may wonder why the heck did you get that MP3 for. Don't loose faith yet, because you can improve the quality a lot more, but you need at least 50 Mb of free disk space. (50 Mb is aproximately 4.5 minutes of music)
You need to decode the MP3 file to a 16 bit stereo AIFF file, and for that you just use Diamond GUI's convert option. Just click the convert button.

You can also do it on Mpega through this command line :
mpega -d1 -q2 -T -i -A mp3file output_file_with_path
Either way, you'll need to wait a bit before you get the decoded file, but it's worth it!
After getting it, you need to download Play16 from Aminet to play the decoded file.
Once you have it installed, just run it from a shell with these flags:
play16 F V=1 BUF=600 VOL=150 OUT=Paula14 aiff_file_with_path
There you go... you should be listening to a great quality music right now !
Just record it to tape or to a digital sound media (through the Amiga's sound outputs) and you'll be pissing off your friends about how great MP3's are!
68060/PPC users do this:
If you own one of these, then you're in for a nice time! You can just play the MP3 in real time an enjoy! If you're using SongPlayer, the GUI is self-explanatory. Set the quality as high as you can.

If you're using Diamond GUI don't be afraid to use Maximum Quality and Frequency Division of 1. If you're using the Mpega executable, just run it like this:
mpega -q2 -d1 -T -i mp3file

Back to the mp3 page!

	You can fill the profile gadget with any description that fits best the site you're going to connect to. Just fill in the essential bits in the relevant spaces, and don't forget to check if the port number is 21. And always set the compression checkbox off, as most sites don't like it.
AmFTP site configuration