• Ilya Minkov <midiclub 8ung.at> May 09 2003
• "Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> May 09 2003

Hello Wizards.

I'm sorry for posting such a general question on such a specific 
newsgroup, but i believe here are people who might know how to help.

The usual problem in sound processing using floating-point is 
denormalization. The bad thing is, it usually happens not to one value, 
but to thousands at once. Is there any way to deal with it without a 
huge penalty? It is not necessary to try to treat de-normals carefully, 
it is enough to zero them out. Is there an efficient way to implement 
this? I know there is within SIMD2 (Pentium4), but the code has to stay 
at least Pentium3/Athlon compatible.

Does the program start-up code set the FP control word? Are the FP 
exceptions enabled or disabled?

Thanks in advance,
-i.

"Ilya Minkov" <midiclub 8ung.at> wrote in message
news:b9h8uf$187i$1 digitaldaemon.com...
 The usual problem in sound processing using floating-point is
 denormalization. The bad thing is, it usually happens not to one value,
 but to thousands at once. Is there any way to deal with it without a
 huge penalty? It is not necessary to try to treat de-normals carefully,
 it is enough to zero them out. Is there an efficient way to implement
 this? I know there is within SIMD2 (Pentium4), but the code has to stay
 at least Pentium3/Athlon compatible.


The easiest way is to switch to 80 bit reals. That gives you more room
before you lose bits to denormalization.

 Does the program start-up code set the FP control word?


Yes.

 Are the FP
 exceptions enabled or disabled?


Disabled.