ROCK on NUC10i7 seems to struggle with MQA files

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
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While I have read that I shouldn’t concern myself too much with the processing speed that displays when looking at the audio path, it just seems strange to me that the NUC10i7 in an Akasa fanless case that I just built will frequently drop to 2x or 3x when processing MQA streams from TIDAL. I do use parametric EQ for room correction, but I made a point to get the best NUC based on Roon’s recommendation.

Any thoughts or advice? It also has a 512GB M.2 SSD and 16GB RAM. I have Verizon gigabit internet too.

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What is the processing speed without the EQ?

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It will be interesting to see the difference but in all honesty if processing speed does not drop below 1.2x I would not worry about it overmuch.
2x or 3x means it’s still got a lot in reserve.

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Interestingly, the same track with EQ was processing just under 8x, but without it only went up to 10x

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I notice on my 8i7 that most of the time the cores are throttled down. As I do more (eg turning on DSD upsampling on a zone) the performance goes up and the multipliers on other non DSD zones increase.

I expect your 10i7 is better at this than my 8i7, plus of course it has 6 cores.

So like you I’m surprised that MQA is so demanding, but you can likely run 12 of those zones without issue, and if my throttling theory is right, perhaps many more.

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