For comparison this is what I observe running Roon 64bit on my Lenovo i7 8GB RAM PC running Windows 10 64 bit.
Background and on demand audio analysis enabled, however all files have been analysed (so this is moot).
Roon CPU usage.
Roon Minimised, Not Playing: Roon 0.0% CPU, RAAT 0.0%
Roon Maximised, Not Playing: Roon 0.1% CPU, RAAT 0.0%
Yes, this helps my understanding, and this is how I thought it worked until I read this http://kb.roonlabs.com/Sound_Quality_in_One_Computer
the other day, where Roon recommend to turn off audio analysis, which allbeit is then not very important in the context of lowering CPU usages and enhancing sound quality.
The remaining question for me would be what and why Roon is using all that cpu just to play a wav of cd quality, if I can point to my (inaccurate) overview earlier today.
Is it meta information update surveys, or is it media playback?
Could you please comment on that?
EDIT: You already did comment with that overview of the i7 cpu usage, which is ânothingâ. In consequence, there is probably some features that Roon utilizes on an i7 that is not available on vintage computers like this MacBook Air. Perhaps HW accelleration?
EDIT2: Checking on a Samsung Ativ 9+ i5 the situation is similar to the Lenovo i7, with approx 2-3% cpu when showing GUI. (I had no chance to check this until I completely reinstalled Roon on the Samsung a few days ago as it could not see the core on that MacBook Air. Reinstall AND deleting files helped for that problem)
If nothing else, I can use the Samsung for occasional minimalist playing. Problem solved, but there is an âvintage Macbook air 2009â improvement potential disclosed here, compared to other players. Perhaps a bit on the fringe of top priority after all.
I donât believe what I said contradicts what is stated in that link, emphasis is mine:
[quote=Roon Knowledge base]Our Recommendations
Disable background work or wait for it to finish.[/quote]
This advice re switching off background audio analysis is normaly for new adopters running Roon on underspeced hardware with moderate to large libraries ⌠where audio analysis is likely to take days rather than hours.
There is another factor to note as well ⌠the original v1.0 Roon Core handled the audio streaming as well as the administration and GUI functions.
In v1.2 all the critical Audio processing was split out into the âlight weightâ RAAT process ⌠so it is decoupled from the Core.
However, the advice still stands to get the best sound quality it is advantageous to decouple the DAC from the electrically ânoisyâ machine running the Core by using a remote RAAT network bridge.
It will be interesting to see how your testing goes on the Samsung Ativ 9+ i5.
Yes, I understand what you are saying, even if I would like to underline that I find disconnecting the power supply from the PC to be the most important of tweaks. It is the same effect as takes place (at least here in Norway with a non-optimal power system) when the lights go down low late at night; the audio quality may finally blossom.
In particular when using the Samsung, the 50Hz hum is audible through the USB cable, which is completely devastating, but oh so common with lousy laptop powersupplies.
The Samsung (ativ) was already reported as similar to the Lenovo, only with i5 performance level of +2%
Interesting. Generally speaking, I subjectively prefer Windows for audio software. We develop such a strange thing as a Java / Android based audio enhancer that are down to 64 samples latency on Windows because we have made Java ASIO compliant. Cannot do that on Mac (using Java). A parallell story, perhaps.