05-Mar-2015, 10:30
(This post was last modified: 05-Mar-2015, 10:31 by Rufus McDufus.)
One of the problems of software-induced jitter is the number of interrupts which can occur on a processor which is also processing/playing music. It's possible to shift the interrupts onto other processors cores - for instance the hardware interrupts from the USB device driver. It should be possible to do this for SPDIF drivers or whatever too.
Dedicating cores to the music-only processes also helps in theory (less soft interrupts and cpu contention).
I'm guessing many dedicated transports/players do this kind of thing already. Many are based on small computing devices like the Cubox etc.
It's best to dedicate a computer transport to music only if you're looking for out-and-out sound quality - the less going on on the box the better, but there's no reason why you can't run XBMC. I think there is a Cubox XBMC image already (not sure about Hummingboard). It might be a case if having one OS on a card with XBMC and one with Volumio or another mpd-based distro. Bit of a faff changing cards and booting the desired OS all the time though!
Dedicating cores to the music-only processes also helps in theory (less soft interrupts and cpu contention).
I'm guessing many dedicated transports/players do this kind of thing already. Many are based on small computing devices like the Cubox etc.
It's best to dedicate a computer transport to music only if you're looking for out-and-out sound quality - the less going on on the box the better, but there's no reason why you can't run XBMC. I think there is a Cubox XBMC image already (not sure about Hummingboard). It might be a case if having one OS on a card with XBMC and one with Volumio or another mpd-based distro. Bit of a faff changing cards and booting the desired OS all the time though!