The following table shows the real time usage of the central processor on a Power Macintosh 6100/60 computer under various test cases playing a single sound. The percentage refers to how much of the processor's time is spent executing the code to play the sound in the given case. This compares the emulated 68040 processor code of the previous Sound Manager with the new fully native PowerPC code of Sound Manager 3.1 software.
You can expect the new Sound Manager to perform 4-6 times faster on your Power Macintosh computer. The sound input interrupt handler was also optimized, and you can expect it to be 7-9 times faster.
| PowerMac 6100/60 | Emulated 68k | Native PowerPC* |
| 8bit, mono | 5% | 1.6% |
| 8bit, mono, w/sample rate conversion | 12% | 2.2% |
| 16bit, stereo | 13% | 1.9% |
| 16bit, stereo, w/sample rate conversion | 26% | 2.3% |
| 16bit, stereo, w/sample rate conversion, IMA | 41% | 6.6% |
| * Overall performance may be affected by other extensions or control panels. |
For more information on how to get Sound Manager see the following article: