The introduction of scheduled background tasks in B1625 what are the impact on SQ, when these tasks are performed ‘out-of-hours’ and therefore not conducted during ‘in-hours’ playback?
Other forums (Naim) have lots of posts about reducing CPU loads, which in turn reduces the level of current drawn and therefore the noise from the power supply - but these are ‘frontend’ equipment such as network players, renenders, DAC etc.
The Roon server, certainly for me, is very much ‘backend’ presently with the NAS units that contain local library and content, which is then internally networked to my ‘frontend’ components and therefore its workload levels not have much impact of the SQ presented.
I would like having the housekeeping required on a Roon Library on a schedule, as this will be better. My server is on 24/7, so this is now a ‘night time’ task post 2am.
In the Naim case that might (if at all) affect underpowered old streamers (not even Roon Ready) that have streamer/decoder and DAC in the same box.
Totally different situation with Roon. And if a concern, simply schedule the background work to times when Roon isn’t used, which one would do anyway. Win-win.
Additional CPU cycles run associated by some housekeeping tasks seem to present a massive SQ decline on their latest network players, including the flagship ND555.
The issue is still outstanding, following several firmware updates later.
I am, was just wondering what impact these tasks were having on a Roon Server, and whether it would be more when it a ‘DAC connected’ environment vs a IP networked configuration.
Never read about this in years on Naim forum. I guess someone invented a new bogey man to be concerned about. There are no real housekeeping tasks on the 555, it is just a streamer, everything else is in the app or UPnP server. Idiotic stuff like this is why I never go there anymore.
The housekeeping is in the 3rd party Streamer board, OEM’ed from Stream Unlimited.
This triggers at various times, but only after the board has been running for some time, and has a ‘downstream’ effect on the DSP ahead of the DAC.
The BridgeCo. board used in previous generations and custom modified by Naim for higher SQ, but this supplier was no more.
And what is this housekeeping supposed to be doing?
Sounds to me like the same ■■ like „I can hear an SQ difference between different remote versions“.
Really all this does is tell users that they should never buy Naim. It must be total crap.
Anyway, that’s still unrelated to running the server on an entirely separate machine and if anything an argument for doing so and reducing the streamer tasks to receiving PCM just like Roon does.
These sound like the kinds of “problems” with digital that I’d read about on forums over two decades ago…Issues which should have all pretty much died out once Intel moved to Core 2 Duo chips.
A lot of the…uh, more experienced and…eh… let’s say, longer living folks among us, those who seem to frequent places such as this and some of the similar spots online, seem to bring up certain issues, on occasion, be they digital, mechanical, electrical in nature, what have you, many of which don’t feel as though they’ve been genuine issues for…well, quite some time now.
After all, I’m sure that there are still folks out there arguing that computer cycles effect the purity of .FLAC compression levels.
Not shared, but who cares when it has a material effect on the SQ.
Completely different - this actually in the audio processing chain, and therefore possible to have an effect.
Not Naim’s fault - it was undocumented by SU, so unknown to Naim, plus it only kicked in after the board had been powered for some time, so not present when they ‘voiced’ the firmware and checked how it operated and sounded.
However, it has removed any desire, intention or possibility of me upgrading to a newer generation that uses the SU boards or any other product that also OEM’s SU’s products.
Sure, but then why is Roon releasing a Build that allows these tasks on the Roon Server to be scheduled, as to not interfere, if there was no impact on the operation?
Well it’s not IN the processing chain, it’s an alleged external influence ON the chain. In a 25k streamer LOL.
So that’s 100% Naim’s fault if it’s true, not for causing it but for letting it happen in their supposed super strict testing that users pay top money for.
Because it interfered with interactive responsiveness of the UI (and in rare cases - I suppose with underpowered servers - interruptions). There were LOTS of forum complaints about not being able to browse or edit without the UI getting stuck at inconvenient times. Nothing to do with degraded SQ:
There are things like “Disable the default music folder” and “Disable DSP and remove filters (don’t worry, you can always add these back).”
Come on!
And of course within 3 posts in the original head-fi thread, the first guy shows up with “these setting sound more analog”. It’s ridiculous and idiotic full stop.
Regarding the original question on potential SQ impact from background tasks in RoonServer, this new feature should make it fairly easy for those in doubt to find out for themselves.
Just intentionally schedule those tasks for specific time, start a listening session and wait for the background tasks to kick in.
I strongly doubt it will have any impact at all, especially in case you run server and endpoint on different hardware as roon recommends. The endpoint device isn’t affected by housekeeping tasks on the server. As long as there are no dropouts in playback caused by buffer underrun that is.
As Roon pointed out, this is about GUI performance being affected by background tasks. So simply scheduling this for night hours should do the trick. Another option would be to automatically stop/pause those background tasks in case of user interaction / playback being started.
I have never considered Naim to be a audiophile brand,
A few more cpu cycles has an impact on sq? Was this iterated using a 1970 based computer? My Roon server has the capability of 30,000 MIPS (millions of instructions per second), so if Roon executes a few thousands of instructions per second, do you really thing adding a couple more thousand instructions per second is going to have an impact on sq? Check you servers cpu usage during using Roon, you will be surprised how little of the entire machine is being used.