Nah, he just remember the old days (and old PCs specs): my old Pentium 133MHz was able to decode a 128kbps mp3, with winamp, but you couldn't do anything else at the same time, not even scrolling a text file... Nowadays cpu are so fast that decoding mp3 uses anlmost no cpu.
Encoding is another thing, obviously it'll always use 100% cpu (well, if the sys is fast enough) to use the less time possible, which should be good (faster encode).
If one would go cuda/opencl/whatever, obviously that will offload the cpu but at the risk is that the encoder won't be reliable as one encoding on cpu is.
My old 486 DX4 100mhz running win95 was able to play a 128kbps mp3 aswell in winamp.
* One suggestion I have for 3.9 is to make the default setting in Miscellaneous section that Track looping/ending to have Loop drowdown set to Never by default and Limit to 0. (SNES songs will continue for ever if you have the default settings xmplay has right now)
* Another suggestion is that MOD section should have Interpolation off and ramping off and pan separation 30.
* Also under Playlist section the Ignore filetypes inputbox could have the following default values: avi mpg mpeg txt jpg jpeg gif png bmp
What do you guys think about these default values?