For music amateur who likes to use CAS (Computer As Source), one of source is “web streaming music” such as internet radio, YouTube, etc… The speed depends on your home ISP, LAN card and web browser. Passing through the computer bus such as PCI, SATA, the digital streaming music will output to sound card. There are three types of sound card such as “built-in” motherboard sound chipset (e.g. HD Audio) or “add-on” internal PCI sound card and external USB DAC.
A speed test is done to compare different web browsers including Google Chrome, Opera, FireFox, Lunascape, SeaMonkey and Internet Explorer as attached. The result shows that Google Chrome and Opera are the fastest while Internet Explorer 8 is the slowest. For this reason, I am now using Google Chrome and feel that the speed is excellent fast. Just for reference!
A speed test is done to compare different web browsers including Google Chrome, Opera, FireFox, Lunascape, SeaMonkey and Internet Explorer as attached. The result shows that Google Chrome and Opera are the fastest while Internet Explorer 8 is the slowest. For this reason, I am now using Google Chrome and feel that the speed is excellent fast. Just for reference!
Attachments
If you switch to Google Chrome, you do not need to delete Internet Explorer. They can co-exist. You can import the bookmark of IE8 into Google Chrome without re-typing website address. Both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer are free of charge. There are over 50% of users for IE8 while only 5% users for Google Chrome nowadays.
Many people confuse with Mbps and MB/s. “b” refers to “Bit” and “B” refers to “Byte”, thus 1 MB/s = 8 Mbps. Some data of web streaming path are listed for reference.
Your home ISP, say 100M. It is 100Mbps which is equivalent to 12.5 MB/s.
The minimum CPU speed is Pentium III which is sufficient for all computers.
LAN card up to 10/100/1000M Giga speed.
It is OK for all computer bus interfaces as below.
=>SATA2 = 384 MB/s (i.e. 3 Gbit/s) and SATA3 = 768 MB/s (i.e. 6 Gbit/s)
=>PCI = 133 MB/s and PCI-E = 2,048 MB/s (i.e. 16 Gbit/s)
=>USB2.0 = 60 MB/s and USB3.0 = 640 MB/s (5 Gbit/s)
=>FireWire 1384b = 410 MB/s (3.2 Gbit/s)
If the speed of your home ISP is sufficient, then the bottleneck is the web browser. For pure audio streaming (e.g. internet radio), it is sufficient which requires less than 5 MB/s. Hence, the difference is not significant. For soundtrack movie streaming with both video and audio, it is the problem particularly with HD video soundtrack (i.e. 720p or 1080p) which sometimes requires up to 20MB/s. Using Google Chrome, you feel an extremely fast speed while Internet Explorer 8 is at dead slow speed.
(Remark: the clock in computer is mainly for timing of CPU processing and does not need to synchronize with your sound card or external USB DAC in audio application. Depends on the patch of digital data sending (i.e. protocol), the jitter problem mainly depends on your sound card or USB DAC)
Many people confuse with Mbps and MB/s. “b” refers to “Bit” and “B” refers to “Byte”, thus 1 MB/s = 8 Mbps. Some data of web streaming path are listed for reference.
Your home ISP, say 100M. It is 100Mbps which is equivalent to 12.5 MB/s.
The minimum CPU speed is Pentium III which is sufficient for all computers.
LAN card up to 10/100/1000M Giga speed.
It is OK for all computer bus interfaces as below.
=>SATA2 = 384 MB/s (i.e. 3 Gbit/s) and SATA3 = 768 MB/s (i.e. 6 Gbit/s)
=>PCI = 133 MB/s and PCI-E = 2,048 MB/s (i.e. 16 Gbit/s)
=>USB2.0 = 60 MB/s and USB3.0 = 640 MB/s (5 Gbit/s)
=>FireWire 1384b = 410 MB/s (3.2 Gbit/s)
If the speed of your home ISP is sufficient, then the bottleneck is the web browser. For pure audio streaming (e.g. internet radio), it is sufficient which requires less than 5 MB/s. Hence, the difference is not significant. For soundtrack movie streaming with both video and audio, it is the problem particularly with HD video soundtrack (i.e. 720p or 1080p) which sometimes requires up to 20MB/s. Using Google Chrome, you feel an extremely fast speed while Internet Explorer 8 is at dead slow speed.
(Remark: the clock in computer is mainly for timing of CPU processing and does not need to synchronize with your sound card or external USB DAC in audio application. Depends on the patch of digital data sending (i.e. protocol), the jitter problem mainly depends on your sound card or USB DAC)
Remark: If you want to listen High fidelity music at 24Bit/192KHz Master Studio quality with WAV or FLAC format, just download songs from paid music websites such as HTrack or Linn. No matter whether you are an Apple fan using iTune or Microsoft fan using Footbar2000, don’ t use S/PDIF or AES/EBU interfaces as it will compress to 24Bit/48KHz and wastes your money. Use Asynchronous USB interface and DAC chipset both support up to 24Bit/192KHz. (Exception: Weiss USB DAC uses Firewire 1394b interface, but sounds good)
I want to add a remark that most of family may not affordable to pay high speed home ISP even if HD audio streaming (e.g. 24Bit/192KHz) is technical feasible. The speed of HD video/audio streaming may require 20 MB/s or over while 100M home ISP is equivalent to 12.5 MB/s. Thus, require to upgrade to 200M (not share) or up to 1 GB home ISP which is very expensive.
Google Chrome is ranked as the fastest web browser up-to-date. The secret of core technology is the “V8 JavaScript Engine” and is explained by Google at YouTube. It is free for web browser, but predicts the major profitability is the application in Android mobile phone market since V8 JavaScript Engine is an open source.
I think that may depend on the audio card you are using, my M-Audio Audiophile PCI 24192 and 2496 cards support 24 bit 192K and 24 bit 96K respectively over coaxial spdif.. (Verified by loop back testing with my external dac verified to 96K with >40kHz tones.) I suspect support to only 48K may be true for chipsets commonly found on motherboards, but I have not checked this.
You are correct and your measurement is right! You may take a look of my previous post at this thread for reference.
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