playing MP3 vs CPU usage

[Yau Chan <ychan@cs.wisc.edu>]

Hi.  I'm a beginner in Linux.
I just set up my new sound card and it plays very good when
I'm plaything something alone.  But when I'm playing a song
in a terminal, and tryig to do something else.  like switching
to another terminal on the Desktop, the song will stall for
a very very short bit.  i tried to keep track of the CPU
usage.  when it's playing the song alone, it's using about
20%.  But whenever i try to do something else, it just jump
to full for a short instance.  I wonder if there is any way
that I can modify it so that it will be more smooth when i'm
playing song and do other things.  Thanks.

I'm using a very slow computer, which is a Pentium 133.
But I don't have such problem in windows95 and windows NT.
So, I guess linux should do better.  Thank you very much.

Ben.
(ychan@cs.wisc.edu)