deceptive processor speeds!

S

seeme

Guest
Just curious,

when i am converting mp3's to wav for editing, i notice that my processor (Duron 900) uses at the most 90% of its processing power to make the conversion. not just that, its the total load on the processor at the time.

i want to know, if the processor is not using 100% of its processing power to make the conversion, then why would say a theoretical Duron 1500 do the job any faster?

Im not talking system/ram upgrades, simply a faster duron. My simple logic would have it that a faster processor simply would only use say 40% of its processing power to do the same job, and do the job in exactly the same time.

I know this is not the case, but why?

J
:confused:
 
it'll use 90 either way, why the duron? an xp will do it faster?
 
programs are directly related to cpu function. because encoding an mp3 is software based, it uses a lot of processing power from the cpu. depending if you go from cda to mp3, its actually going from cda-wav-mp3 i believe. so the transitioning takes a lot of cpu power. i could be wrong, but thats the way i see it happening and i'm too lazy to go out and research it.
 
you sure your harddrive isn't the bottleneck? .wav's are way bigger than .mp3's and would take a lot of writing to the harddrive.
 
current software programs for editing music ie mp3's only allow you to edit the music if its in wav format.

that said, if you drag and drop an mp3 into the program to edit it, it will always be converted to wav first before any editing can be done. then when you are finished, it will save the file back to mp3 for you, or whatever available format you choose.

---I dont think my question has been comprehended as i meant it.---

1. if my processor is not needing to use its full potential to do a task that takes 10 seconds to complete, then would an even faster processor still take 10 seconds to do the same task?

2. would the faster processor do the same job faster? or would it still take 10 seconds, except only have say a 30% load instead of a 90% load

J
 
yeah, i know what you're saying. if 90% of one processor is being used, having a faster one shouldn't make any difference. it'll just give you more overhead to perform other tasks in addition, if you wanted.

afterthought: might want to find out what is keeping it from going faster, though... if you're concerned with making it faster.
 
It depends on what the bottle neck is, could be the harddrive slowing the conversion down ?

Could be a lot of things.
 
It takes me less than 2 secs to convert a 128bps mp3 to wav. I have an old 800 mhz. How much faster do you want it to be? Now when it comes time to convert to ogg vorbis, it takes me about 4 minutes. GL
 
i agree. the only way to make it faster is like a scsi or raid setup.
 
the time example i used was something i pulled out of my pants..lol.

I was simply curious, I was converting an 80 minute 192kbps file for editing and i thought, i wonder how hard my processor is working, so i ctrl, alt, del and had a squiz at the performance tab.

Thanks for your input guys. I have no need to make the conversion go faster at the moment.

Are you sure that a faster processor wouldnt do the same job in a quicker space of time?

J
 
I took a 128 bps 45.8meg mp3 (creed-weathered 51 minutes) and converted to wav, 505meg. It took me a little over a minute to do.
It would be faster with a faster cpu, better memory, and a ultra160 drive. But how much faster, and would it be worth the cost of the upgrade? Also, how often do I do this? never. GL
 
Your CPU will never use 100% of its power to convert mp3/wav in any direction nore it will use it's full power to encode/decode a .vob-file (DVD). The only possibility to "force" the CPU using all it's power is to go the the Task Manager and set the application to "realtime" priority. But if you do so while converting mp3s/wavs/DVDs you won't be able to work at your PC anymore. Probably your screen will be frozen until the conversion has completed, you even won't see the progress bar proceed in most apps.

The more GHz your CPU offers the faster the conversion goes through but by standard the CPU will never use all its power. Your HDD has in most cases no influence on the conversion because all up to date hard drives can write at least 8 MB/sec and the conversion won't be that fast.

Chrissi
 
It takes me less than 2 secs to convert a 128bps mp3 to wav. I have an old 800 mhz

How long is that mp3 file ? Even my fastest Athlon XPs and P4s don't convert a normal length mp3 in 2 secs.
 
Maybe it was 3 secs. Maybe it was a 4 meg 128bps mp3. The point to show was that its not a very cpu intensive task. BTW, I used winamp diskwriter plug.
 
i was using sound forge 5f. it would have taken about 2.5 minutes at the most. i was not overly concentrating on how long the process took.

Also, with the conversion programs like the one in winamp, and also, i have never been all that impressed with music match jukebox converter, they are a little lossy in their conversion when you put format from mp3 - wav back to mp3 again.

i haven not had this problem yet with sound forge.
 
interesting. No matter how fast the computer, it should still use all CPU, but just take less time.
Unless there is a bottleneck somwhere. So I agree with taurus & Electronic Punk.
If you want to be sure:

a) Try another encoder
b) You can max the CPU in other stuff such as a game or movie, right?
 
yup, i can max my processor out all right. however it took playing a full screen divX with sound, running winamp (icq and other 'normal programs') and opening photoshop at the same time to do it.
 
I am using AudioConvert to convert mp3s back to wav, it really gives you a great quality. To create mp3s I use AudioGrabber because I normally get them from my own CDs... I use 192 kbps as quality because with a 4.1 sound system 128 kbps losses a lot of quality in the high and very low tunes.
 
LAME is the best encoder. You can get it here. It can work stand-alone or plug into a program such as audiograbber.
If you are using it stand-alone you might want a GUI for it.
There's links from the lame site.
CDex is freeware and has the latest LAME built in.
 
Im beginning to convert my mp3 collection over to ogg vorbis. It is open source and playback support is becoming mainstream. It offers better sound than mp3 with smaller file sizes. Check it out.
http://www.vorbis.com/

I listen to alot of my songs through my home stereo system. Anything lower than 320kbp/s on mp3 sounds like crap.You miss alot of the sub bass and alot of the highs.
 

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