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In Reply to: PC cost? posted by Adriel on December 25, 2006 at 16:31:22:
Adriel:This is not my personal experience.
I have managed to take a $750 Medion "Cicero" PC (2.93GhZ PIV Hyperthreading) and stream tri-amplified audio at 24/96 x 6 channels (left-low/mid/high) and (right-low/mid/high) with no dropouts. It has a variable speed oversize CPU fan (that barely spins with low CPU utilization), fanless power supply and no case fans.
Even when doing upsampling of Redbook 16/44.1 files to 24/96, doing realtime convolution, *and* using a VST based crossover plugin I am using less that 20% CPU, averaging closer to 15%. That's my HIGHEST utilization. With 2-channel playback and no DSP crossover or convolver I am using about 5% CPU.
The only times I get pop and click issues is when my output configuration I want to use results in clock skew due to using I/O that has different clock sources. There are many ways to overcome this issue, but it's not a CPU/memory resource issue - it's a clock source issue. Other than that, one just has to watch for rare but possible IRQ issues, or when VST plugins share resources with older video cards.
I am not sure why one needs to spend $3000 on a PC. I mean - for $3K worth of PC in 2006 you are talking about a serious amount of computing horsepower and a mega-tonne of storage. Could you describe your application so we could better understand why such a "beast" of a computer is needed?
I can't even imagine what $3K would get one in terms of performance. It would indeed be awesome... but necessary?
Follow Ups:
I think a maxed-out computer is a negative. You need a sufficient CPU to run any DSP's or upsampling. Any more and you creat excess heat, and will need to get rid of it with loud fans. Excess graphics capability means more RFI in the box.It's best to keep it as minimal as possible, just enough to get it to do what you need.
I agree that it is easy to get into having too much computer for an audio playback system. CDs require a data speed of a bit over 1Mb/sec. Run-of-the-mill hard drives, motherboards, memory chips, CPUs, ethernet and wireless connections are all easily capable of transfer speeds that are tens to hundreds of times faster than what CD audio requires. This even covers the needs of DVD-A or SACD when that media is demanding all it can.At the computer level, data is data and the goal is to get it to where it needs to be faster than the decoder requires it. Any basic computer you buy new these days can do that, especially if you're not burdening the machine with other simultaneous tasks. You don't need a $3,000 machine and constant upgrades to do this.
The focus is on the audio end, from the DAC forward. But now you're in the same boat whether the data was delivered straight from a CD transport or a hard drive.
I was getting glitch-free 24/88.2 upsampling with ASIO with a Pentium II Xeon at 450 MHz, before I had to replace it a few months ago. You don't need much CPU power for computer audio.
"The focus is on the audio end, from the DAC forward. But now you're in the same boat whether the data was delivered straight from a CD transport or a hard drive."Yes - that's very true. This is why not all PC based systems are created equal.
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