It really depends on which recent i7. My [email protected] does much better even with its burden of Win10 than whatever i7 is in the Nucleus+ running their proprietary Linux OS. Now building an i9-9900 equivalent to live farther from the edge.
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Totoro
Member
If you have it hooked up to a monitor, what does it show if you type htop or top while it’s thrashing?
I run a pcengines apu c4 with Debian. It’s fanless with a quad core amd x86_64 chip,4g of ram and an ssd. 3 gigabit nics. IMO it’s way better than a nuc for your purposes. If you ran freebsd you could take advantage of zfs storage features like snapshot recovery-if it’s good enough for Netflix...
Just stereo.
This used to be true but there are a lot of live to DSD recordings available for download. My library of DSD is all that. I buy content in whatever format was recorded.Most DSD recordings were anyhow derived from PCM masters.
Challenge recording (or was it Channel recordings?) and Blue Coast records are two that I purchased a bunch of DSD files from.
Thanks but I sent it back to Roon months ago.
Challenge and Channel both record, edit and issue DXD/DSD but I believe BlueCoast passes theirs through an analog intermediary.
DXD is of course PCM.
Of course but I really doubt if any DSD avoids the DXD phase at the recording site (depending on the chosen hardware/software). OTOH, using it for short segments during editing is less pernicious, imho, than analog conversion/reversion.
I agree - going via analog is much more lossy than using DXD (even for the whole track).
I know some of their bits are recorded to Reel to Reel but didn't think all were. Need to check....
Ron Texas
Master Contributor
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I thought DSD playback without converting it to PCM precludes using any DSP. Somewhere I read the latest ESS chips can control DSD volume digitally, but for the most part there has to be an analogue volume control after the DSD is converted to analogue.
Of course there are folks converting PCM to DSD 512 on the fly before sending it to their DAC. I'm not sure what it accomplishes, but it requires a fast CPU.
Of course there are folks converting PCM to DSD 512 on the fly before sending it to their DAC. I'm not sure what it accomplishes, but it requires a fast CPU.
Yes, in general.
Yes.
My problem is that it takes a similarly powerful CPU to downsample DSD256 to 24/192PCM in order to use DSP.
Ron Texas
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I can downsample DSD64 to 24/96 PCM on my lightweight Pentium NUC with enough CPU left over for a convolver. Works in both Foobar and JRiver. My machine would totally choke on DSD256 to PCM 24/192 plus DSP.
BillG
Major Contributor
My sense of JR is just what you say - engineered for engineers - not a bad thing surely, but in my experience usually a heavy price to pay on the UI end! (My background in apps dev makes me a bit picky when it comes to UI design).
"Fiddle factor" definitely has great value - as long as I don't spend more time fiddling than playingand the 'fiddling' is not required except for during setup.
You're welcome...
For people like us, the fiddle factor is usually welcome. However, when I'm at home chillaxin' I don't want to fiddle.
I installed JRiver one night, after I'd had some wine and a spliff - Not the best time to evaluate software, I know. But what the hell! - and really couldn't be bothered getting beyond the setup. I may try again when I'm sober! Hahahaha!
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Impossible to tell if it is a poor implementation of DSD to PCM processing alghoritm, poor Windows setup or something else. In any case, as I showed with Volumio (ALSA) screen snapshot doing the same job, with proper implementation even much slower processor should be able to do such job easilly. That fact that i5, and even i7, are choking speaks for itself about poor programming practice..
maty
Major Contributor
Only you need an i7 if you want use something like HQplayer to upsampling the audio very high.
With i5 you need enough to multimedia. To music, an i3 is enough. The most reasonable, thinking about the future, is an i5. To save, let it be from the previous generation.
I cannot comment on the new AMD (to games are very appreciated the Ryzen). Many years ago I had an AMD K6-2 300 (W98, NT and Linux).
The best thing is that it is custom like my PC, with a silent power supply and low ripple at 5V (USB), as well as the rest of the fans. At EU, the german Bequiet! is a cheap/good/silent SMPS with low ripple. And a silent case, Cooler Master has one silent and cheap.
Yes, silent is a very important word in audio, like noise.
With i5 you need enough to multimedia. To music, an i3 is enough. The most reasonable, thinking about the future, is an i5. To save, let it be from the previous generation.
I cannot comment on the new AMD (to games are very appreciated the Ryzen). Many years ago I had an AMD K6-2 300 (W98, NT and Linux).
The best thing is that it is custom like my PC, with a silent power supply and low ripple at 5V (USB), as well as the rest of the fans. At EU, the german Bequiet! is a cheap/good/silent SMPS with low ripple. And a silent case, Cooler Master has one silent and cheap.
Yes, silent is a very important word in audio, like noise.
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No Windows. Linux variant OS.
Not comparable. We are discussing Roon and multichannel; are you?
Old Listener
Addicted to Fun and Learning
You're welcome...
For people like us, the fiddle factor is usually welcome. However, when I'm at home chillaxin' I don't want to fiddle.
I installed JRiver one night, after I'd had some wine and a spliff - Not the best time to evaluate software, I know. But what the hell! - and really couldn't be bothered getting beyond the setup. I may try again when I'm sober! Hahahaha!
JRiver has a lot of capability but you have to think out what you want it to do and then look around for the features that will get you to your goal. You don't seemed to have made any effort at all.
