System Requirements for HD Playback

[James Cuthbert]

Sound wise I've got my system pretty much how I want it, I think it'll suit me perfectly when I bring my Rogers speakers over.

 

I used to run XP (with ASIO4all) but it crashed quite often and occasionally had drop-outs when playing HD music. Recently I did a fresh re-install with Vista running in WASPI exclusive mode. I gave it a re-format and only installed essential programs and as a result it crashes slightly less but it does suffer drop-outs more, sometimes in silence and sometimes with a buzzing noise.

 

Nowhere have I ever seen system requirements for playing 24/96 music, this Toshiba is only 1.6 Ghz dual core with 2.5 GB of RAM but I always thought it would be sufficient for just playing music. Sometimes it seems to get quite hot, but I'm not sure this is my problem. Since changing to Vista I haven't been able to select more than 250ms of buffer and I suspect this might be the reason. I like this laptop and am on the verge of buying 2 more MB of RAM hoping that this will allow me to buffer for 500ms (as I had in XP)... am I barking up the right tree here or should I just get a faster laptop? What speed processor do I need to play 24/96 music easily?

 

I've plugged my everyday laptop (much faster) into my audio system and it is more stable but really sounds inferior... (I'm assuming it's all the other programs and accessories running in the background).

 

I'm reluctant to change the laptop as It sounds beautiful as it is, I just want more stability. Is there any software that sounds as good but is less demanding?

[bluesman]

There are too many variables left out of your OP - we need more information for even an educated guess. I stream FLACs from NAS over WiFi from an old Toshiba laptop with 1G of RAM running XP and a 64 bit Gateway with 2G running Vista with no problems at all - both are secondary systems using audio out to powered speakers. I had a lot of stuttering etc using the Toshiba's internal 802.11g but switching to a USB n adapter fixed it.

 

Source of files - are you playing back files stored on your computer, USB HD, network storage, cloud or somewhere else?

 

Having plugged your other laptop into the system for comparison suggests that your music files may not be on either computer (unless you tried to compare sound quality sound using different files on each or copied the files from one to the other). If the source files are not on the computers, how do you connect the computer to the source - USB? ethernet? WiFi b? g? n?

 

If they are on this computer, what format and what software are you using?

 

Hardware - are you using the computer's analog audio output into an amplifier, driving an external DAC, or something else?

[James Cuthbert]

Thanks for your response blueman. I'm currently streaming from the laptop's own hard drive (I used to use my NAS in the past but I wondered if this was the problem - I don't think it is in retrospect). My CD quality recordings are a mixture of WAV and FLAC files and work fine. My HD files are mostly FLACs and none are more than 96Mhz. I use J River Music Center in WASPI exclusive mode and 250ms of buffering (when I select 500ms it just doesn't work at all - I wonder whether if the 500ms worked it might fix my drop outs and I wonder if more RAM might enable a larger buffer). Then I use the USB port straight to my asynchronous DAC.

 

Mostly I wonder if the laptop is just too slow 1.6Ghz Dual core with 2.5 GB RAM?

 

Might the laptop have a hardware fault? It does get quite hot sometimes, but sometimes I get drop outs when I first switch it on...

 

I think the software should be OK because I recently formatted the hard drive and re-installed everything with a different OS.

 

Maybe I've set up J River wrongly - but I have followed the advice found in these threads...

 

I'm toying with getting more RAM with the hope it'll buffer up more and play better. If I knew the Computer would work OK and I thought it would help I'd be tempted to get a 250GB SSD for faster, cooler and quieter operation - but I don't want to invest that into it if I'm going to end out throwing it away.

 

I have not found any links on this website that discuss minimum system requirements of the host computer or the issue of drop outs.

 

Cheers once again for your help.

[firedog]

Nowhere have I ever seen system requirements for playing 24/96 music, this Toshiba is only 1.6 Ghz dual core with 2.5 GB of RAM but I always thought it would be sufficient for just playing music. Sometimes it seems to get quite hot, but I'm not sure this is my problem. Since changing to Vista I haven't been able to select more than 250ms of buffer and I suspect this might be the reason.

 

I'm running a server with a dual core ATOM chip 1.6Ghz and 2GB of RAM, running Windows7 32 bit. I don't really do anything with this computer except play music. It works fine, even with hi-res and DSD files. I will probably replace it with a PC with at least 8 GB or RAM, but only because I want to use memory play.

 

So I don't think your problem is simply inadequate HW specs; either the HW is old/defective or there is some software problem.

 

If you want a less resource intensive OS you can try Vortexbox OS or some other Linux Variant. Your laptop is more than enough to run it.

[audiventory]

Try other player (foobar2000, winamp, aimp as example).

Try driver buffering to max and after to min.

Switch other widgets at ASIO4All user interface. Often experience way only.

[phofman]

HD audio playback without resampling (!) puts almost zero load on modern hardware. 500ms cache for stereo 192/24 (or actually 32 as that format is more common internally) requires 2 channels x 192,000 samples/sec x 4 bytes/sample x 0.5 sec = 768 kB of RAM, i.e. nothing in today's standard. The data flow for stereo 192/24 wav is cca 1,2MB/s (10Mbps), basically no load for any hard drive.

 

However, a low-quality/signal wireless network can suffer from dropouts and even sustainable 10Mbps can be a challenge. Plus the network protocol has some overhead, raising those 10Mbps further up.

 

From the configuration standpoint, I would setup as large buffers as possible (and acceptable for your use case).

 

BTW, yesterday I played with merged soundcards and playback of 14-channel (8 + 6) 48/16 FLAC to a 14channel virtual soundcard (8-channel + 6-channel USB cards) consumes about 25% of single-core Atom CPU in powersave mode on my linux EeePC.

[Musicophile]

Since changing to Vista

 

 

I personally use MacOS for my music system, so am not really an expert.

 

However, since my work laptop was upgraded to Vista, it's been running hot and pretty permanently using the harddrive even if the computer does absolutely nothing.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if most of your issues simply come from Vista, which really is the worst OS that Microsoft has put out in a long time.

 

Is there any chance you can run Windows 7 on your computer? Seems to be much better from everything I've seen.

[bluesman]

I don't think your problem is simply inadequate HW specs; either the HW is old/defective or there is some software problem.

 

I agree with this assessment and the other advice posted overnight. I have no JRiver experience at all, so I don't have any insight into potential contributions from it to your problem (or any solutions). But Foobar's free and great, so you might want to download it and see if it makes a difference. If I understand you correctly, you have no problem with wavs and FLACs you ripped yourself - it's only with HD downloads, which suggests that the real problem lies somewhere among the files themselves, the source, the process of downloading, and optimizing your playback systems for the specific files you're using. I can't even begin to keep track of the variance among sound files, and it seems there are many variables that can affect the mechanics of playback.

 

I run Vista on one laptop simply because that's what came on it and I'm too lazy to install the upgrade to 7 that came in the mail a few months after I bought the machine. Foobar does great with Vista on this one, and it's streaming NAS files over wireless n. But, as I posted earlier, I also have no problem with the same source, connection and front end through my 8 year old Toshiba laptop running XP.

[James Cuthbert]

Thanks everyone for being so helpful... Some great advice. I'm going to try foobar to see if that helps and then maybe upgrade to Windows 7. If there's still no luck I'll replace it assuming there's a hardware problem with the laptop. There's no point in spending any real money on such an old laptop.

 

It seems clear that my laptop should run the files ok if it we're working correctly but Just going back to the original title of the thread, has anyone ever heard any officially quoted figures for system requirements?

[bluesman]

It seems clear that my laptop should run the files ok if it we're working correctly

 

I'm not completely convinced of this if your problem is only with downloaded "HD" files. You may well have a software problem related to bit or sample rate. I can't even keep track of all the differences in files, and the JRiver website talks about having to use different output modes to avoid playback problems with different files, audio cards etc.

 

Make sure you know the file format and specs you're trying to play, and be certain that the files are fully compatible with everything in your system from ASIO to JRiver to DAC to connectivity etc before you spend $ on a new OS or computer. If you're only using this computer for audio, open Services and shut down every one that doesn't affect audio function. Then close (or even uninstall) all applications that don't do anything you need. One you get every process, service and program out of the background, Vista may be quite fine for you (I'm working on and listening to my Gateway running Vista right now).

 

I've been programming for 40+ years (started on Fortran II, now primarily using ColdFusion) and I still hate the fact that computers have us at their mercy. No matter how much you know, I find that there's always at least one critical thing you don't know - and that's inevitably the one that's screwing up what you're trying to do. I hate when that happens......

[phofman]

James, the difference in max allowable buffer (500ms vs. 250ms) is a matter of drivers.

 

Try to use the largest buffer size you can find in your playback chain.

 

Your HW is way more than powerfull enough for HD playback (without resampling [TM] )

[James Cuthbert]

Cheers all... tried Foobar, it seems slightly more stable but still far from perfect - on a good day it's fine and on a bad one it cuts out all the time. As far as the OS is concerned I've tried XP and Vista already, I might see if I can get Win 7 or 8 on it. I have 250ms of buffer; if I try and select 500ms it appears to play but no sound comes out. My HD files are mostly flacs but bought from different vendors, HD tracks, Linn, Naim etc. I am beginning to think there's a hardware fault with the computer as thinking about it the fan goes crazy after about 20 mins of playback...

 

I'm beginning to think I should start looking on e-bay for a replacement - they're not that expensive these days.

 

I've still been very pleased to hear your feedback. Knowing it's not under specified has saved me wasting my money needlessly on RAM and possibly a SSD!

[PewterTA]

Try this... set the power setting to maximum (High Performance). It'll keep the CPU in check running at full speed.. if you still have issues, then the latency of the CPU doing the calculation of all the other processes is most likely your issue. Vista is TERRIBLE for doing that.... too much background processing no matter what you do. You could try something like fidelizer which may work in processing the audio over the other services, but it may not help either, you sneeze at the computer and it'll skip without a more powerful processor... your CPU is cutting it close for HD 24/96K playing them flawlessly.

 

I just re-built WKHanna's computer due to these exact types of issues he when I gave him my old server (well old old server). It worked good on most of the CDP playback, just a tick here and there once in a great while. But as he did more with the computer, it jsut got slower and slower and more issues (that was from 2 fresh installs, same thing happened). Now I got him a nice computer with a 3.6GHz quad core... no more issues what so ever now.

[phofman]

Cheers all... tried Foobar, it seems slightly more stable but still far from perfect - on a good day it's fine and on a bad one it cuts out all the time. As far as the OS is concerned I've tried XP and Vista already, I might see if I can get Win 7 or 8 on it. I have 250ms of buffer; if I try and select 500ms it appears to play but no sound comes out.

 

Where do you actually set these values?

 

 

Did you try a different USB port of your notebook? I experienced a similar issue with one older Acer notebook. The on-board soundcard shared IRQ with the graphics card and I could not get it play continuously without dropouts. I could imagine the USB controller servicing the USB port your DAC is connected to shares IRQ with something important and the motherboard/chipset is not properly designed, weird things can happen.

 

It is not about raw power, it looks like some hardware imperfection.

 

 

I am beginning to think there's a hardware fault with the computer as thinking about it the fan goes crazy after about 20 mins of playback...

 

Do you experience large CPU load when the fan kicks in?

[phofman]

Now I got him a nice computer with a 3.6GHz quad core... no more issues what so ever now.

 

IMO raw CPU power is not a solution. Your client might experience the same problem even with this CPU. The cause is somewhere else.