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Doubtful. Back in the day when my 'work computer' was a Pentium (Pentium 200MMX to be exact) playing a MP3 consumed 50% CPU. Note, I no longer remember if mpg123 was using MMX instructions or not.

Given how much faster a Pentium 200MMX was than any 386 CPU, I very much doubt a 386 (even a DX) would have had enough power to decode in real time a MP3.

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Found this (cubic player on a 386DX at 40MHz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jj97NXgHw4 and I'm wondering how much a 32bit ISA is better than a 16bit one for integer decoding.

I remember using winamp on a Pentium 90 and it was up to the job single tasking. I couldn't say the same about the one time I tried to encode.

I can't recall what hardware I first used an MMX-optimized encoder. I remember it making a huge difference though.

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