[SWLUG] tweaking for sound performance

[philicorda]

The best performing mp3 player is mplayer as far as I know.
Even though it's really a movie player, it is almost twice as fast as 
mpg321, mpg123 and xmms in my experience.
My p166mmx 24mb ram laptop can play any mp3 and I can do other things at 
the same time without problems.
This may be because it uses mmx, which your amd 586 might not have... 
even so it's worth a try as if you compile mplayer from source the 
configure optimises the build for your processor.

Also... try fiddling with buffer sizes. The larger the buffer, the less 
interrupts, and the less work the computer has to do. This can make a 
big difference.
Also, if you use mplayer, try various -ao output settings like oss, 
alsa9, SDL etc and see which is the most efficient.
Good luck.