You know what REALLY quieted my PC down?
An SSD.
Even though my desktop PC has a fan, I can't hear it at ALL since I swapped out the hard disk for an SSD. I had no idea that the spinning of the drive was transmitting so much noise into the room.
My other system uses that Thermaltake case that I posted a link to, and that case 'floats' the hard drives on sorbothane mounts, and that seems to help a lot too.
An SSD.
Even though my desktop PC has a fan, I can't hear it at ALL since I swapped out the hard disk for an SSD. I had no idea that the spinning of the drive was transmitting so much noise into the room.
My other system uses that Thermaltake case that I posted a link to, and that case 'floats' the hard drives on sorbothane mounts, and that seems to help a lot too.
The present AMD APU's are Kaveri cores, which are in direct lineage from Bulldozer (a couple generations of optimization, but ultimately Bulldozer architecture). Ryzen-based APU's are still forthcoming.
For audio processing, though, we don't need to use the APU -- brutefir was first coded on p4-era hardware and was able to run pretty much any sort of FIR filter arrangement you could imagine. I'm not even sure it's worth the overhead of the context switch to push that on to the APU. Video's processing demand and ability to use the parallelism and long pipelines makes it worthwhile. Beam steering is still going to be based on long FIR/IIR filters (delay), even if the development of those filters is greater.
Pretty much, for audio only, you can use RPI3-level hardware. Add in other stuff and the value of a more potent processor starts making sense.
I have used an A10 with Mythbuntu to act as a HD video recorder. It can allow to record and/or watch 4 programs at a time. Never really a problem.
However, you should check these out. https://www.asus.com/us/Single-Board-Computer/Tinker-Board/
4 core, 2 gb ram, HDMI out and I believe it can do 24/192 audio.
The difference between an RPI and the ASUS is the bus for Ethernet and usb are separate on the ASUS. You get noise on RPI. Also RPI only has 1 gb of ram.
Volumio just release a version of their software for the ASUS tinker board.
For $60 all said and done, not a bad deal. You might need a USB DAC, but be interesting to see/hear the tinker do audio alone.
I have 4 or more RPI boards doing all sorts of jobs, but I think the ASUS, on paper, is a nicer board.
Just my two cents.
Vince
However, you should check these out. https://www.asus.com/us/Single-Board-Computer/Tinker-Board/
4 core, 2 gb ram, HDMI out and I believe it can do 24/192 audio.
The difference between an RPI and the ASUS is the bus for Ethernet and usb are separate on the ASUS. You get noise on RPI. Also RPI only has 1 gb of ram.
Volumio just release a version of their software for the ASUS tinker board.
For $60 all said and done, not a bad deal. You might need a USB DAC, but be interesting to see/hear the tinker do audio alone.
I have 4 or more RPI boards doing all sorts of jobs, but I think the ASUS, on paper, is a nicer board.
Just my two cents.
Vince
That's a nice find, Vince. Thanks for linking it up! Hard to argue with at $60.
To be clear, I didn't necessarily mean using an RPI3, but that its processing power is up to the task of audio, even before hand-writing the assembly to break out the FFT on to the NEON cores (if that ends up benchmarking as faster in the end!), much less trying to hack access on to the graphics pipeline for GPGPU usage.
To be clear, I didn't necessarily mean using an RPI3, but that its processing power is up to the task of audio, even before hand-writing the assembly to break out the FFT on to the NEON cores (if that ends up benchmarking as faster in the end!), much less trying to hack access on to the graphics pipeline for GPGPU usage.
Agreed. Main thing that got me on this path was that I was already using x86 PCs for a lot of my projects, but I had a mess of cables, power supplies and miniDSPs crammed into the cabinet.
These AMD APUs seem to provide an opportunity to simplify things, because you can basically eliminate the outboard processor and it's cables. (I live in one of those homes where the wife and kids have to get Dad if they wan't to watch TV because of the incomprehensible mess of electronics attached to the TV.)
Ah, yes. An APU driving a super-chromebox that does audio well certainly makes life easier.
In any case, seems like we're saying the same thing in a little different way. A small APU-based system with a remote (Wifi tablet?) and a high-quality 5.1/7.1 USB sound card makes for a lot less clutter.
In any case, seems like we're saying the same thing in a little different way. A small APU-based system with a remote (Wifi tablet?) and a high-quality 5.1/7.1 USB sound card makes for a lot less clutter.
You should stay away from the NUCS IMHO, they heat a lot and the components are overstressed by the high temperatures.
Patrick Bateman said:
Your environment should be pretty noisy
10-15dB of noise is scientifically really audible but you are perhaps poisoned by the sound of your previous HDD.
Not my experience in this application. I use them at home and work without issue. TDPs keep falling.
This, +alltheintegers.
I've tried several versions of roku's, amazon fires, etc. none of them do enough of what I want, well enough, to be worthwhile. So I end up using an ~x86 box, ssd, linux(fedora/deb/whatever).
The APU(s) you posted seem to finally 'be there' in terms of enough gpu/cpu power, low power requirements, etc. for the quiet, powerful, htpc/audio player dreams to become reality.
So thank you for posting this.
also, I'm totally with you on hdd noise. Ditch the stupid spinning disks, they're noisy, they draw too much power, they're big, blah. SSD makes a big difference in the noise department, not to mention the wonderful performance improvements.
Large, slow fans, clever heatsinking/piping, and we may damn near be close enough to silent to be happy.
What about a NAS in another room? Is that a viable option or does it introduce too much complexity?
I actually have my NAS in my home office, soon to be moved into the closet. It's noisy, i7 4770k,32g DDR3, SSD for OS and 5x 2tb SATA drives, RAIDZ2(~7.2tb after RAID).
I've been using it for ~2-2.5yrs now, I'm seriously considering yanking out the SATA drives and using all SSD. For my storage needs(total size) I think the $/G is just about to the point where I'm comfortable making the move. I have a nice SATA/SAS controller so a ton of SSD's wouldn't be an issue.
The other nice thing about a NAS away from ears is you can use smaller disks on the htpc(s). Let the NAS have all the disks, fans, and noisy annoying noise that annoys.
It does add some complexity though. For me, it's not any more complexity than I'm ok with.
It only takes a blink with the current rate of development. Thank you mobile.
It wasn't too long ago that these would have been amongst the fastest computers in the world. Take a look at the top500.org site and go back to the early 90s.
Think of the heart attacks it would have introduced back then if someone said "Yeah, your room filling Cray is nice and all, but it's really not powerful enough for personal audio listening.
And where's the headphone jack? "
E.g.
The 500th on the list from 06/1993: https://www.top500.org/statistics/perfdevel/
Is about the same speed as the A53 cores on the Note 4's SOC: Cortex A53 - Performance and Power - ARM A53/A57/T760 investigated - Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Exynos Review
If that doesn't blow your mind, I'm not really sure what will.
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In case anyone is curious, the #500 computer for 6/
500 Sharp
Japan C3840
HPE 4 0.4 0.5
That translates to made by sharp in Japan, the system is c3840 hpe (anyone know what that is?), 4 cores, 0.4 Rmax (gflops), 0.5 Rpeak (gflops).
If anyone is brave and has the know how, you can download their benchmarking software....
500 Sharp
Japan C3840
HPE 4 0.4 0.5
That translates to made by sharp in Japan, the system is c3840 hpe (anyone know what that is?), 4 cores, 0.4 Rmax (gflops), 0.5 Rpeak (gflops).
If anyone is brave and has the know how, you can download their benchmarking software....
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