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Topic: Busy PC vs idle PC (Read 36226 times) previous topic - next topic
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Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #25 –
Hi, all, very new to lossless audio and trying hard not to get sucked into placebophile (as one poster put it) sites with bogus / unsubstantiated claims.

My question is this - in reading this thread, I'm either misinterpreting (or else interpreting correctly) that the variety of components that we use in our systems are contributing, at least minutely, to sound "artifacts" (Pardon me for not using the correct term, as I haven't learned it yet) even if they are completely indistinguishable to the naked human ear. 

My question is this, then - in cases like these, would it be better to be using CPUs with lower power requirements, with de-overclocking (and in possible cases, underclocking and / or undervolting) along with the same for other components (memory, video cards, etc.)?

Obviously, my interest is purely academic - I like my music and I like my purity levels but if I cannot hear it I am not going to rip the sme track 17 times 17 different ways to find the purest rip - whichever sounds best to me (currently being FLAC) is what I use and run with.  But, it brings up an interesting point:  for OCing, for example, the last time I did it I was told to disable things like Spread Spectrum settings for the motherboard, etc.

Again, Currently I am not OCing at all as I have no need nor desire to - and I'm on a 4 generation old Core i7 965 EE pushing 12 GB of RAM and a pair of SSDs.  But I am *curious* to see how (mathematially) pure the rips can get....

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #26 –
Not more pure than identical.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Wombat on
Here also, i can´t remember having something running not overclocked since my 386DX-33@40
That's kind of funny. The last CPU I ran overclocked was my K6-2 400. At the time, I overclocked it to 420MHz. Determining the rationale for such a trivial overclock is an exercise left for the reader.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #28 –
Quote from: johnlgalt on
But I am *curious* to see how (mathematially) pure the rips can get....


An exact copy is an exact copy. Absolutely (mathematically) identical.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #29 –
Quote from: johnlgalt on
My question is this, then - in cases like these, would it be better to be using CPUs with lower power requirements, with de-overclocking (and in possible cases, underclocking and / or undervolting) along with the same for other components (memory, video cards, etc.)?

In fact I got better RMAA results after I overclocked my i3-540 from 3.07G to 3.7 or 3.8G. I guess it is not related to higher or lower frequency or voltage but because in order to stably overclock I needed to disable some (power management related?) features in BIOS such as C-States, V-Droop, spread spectrum and so on. I suspect some of these features constantly interrupt the power supply of the motherboard and caused interference to the soundcard. But all of these are analog interferences and only affect analog I/Os of the soundcard, they won't affect CD ripping.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #30 –
Quote from: phofman on
Not more pure than identical.



Quote from: julf on
Quote from: johnlgalt on
But I am *curious* to see how (mathematially) pure the rips can get....


An exact copy is an exact copy. Absolutely (mathematically) identical.



Quote from: bennetng on
Quote from: johnlgalt on
My question is this, then - in cases like these, would it be better to be using CPUs with lower power requirements, with de-overclocking (and in possible cases, underclocking and / or undervolting) along with the same for other components (memory, video cards, etc.)?

In fact I got better RMAA results after I overclocked my i3-540 from 3.07G to 3.7 or 3.8G. I guess it is not related to higher or lower frequency or voltage but because in order to stably overclock I needed to disable some (power management related?) features in BIOS such as C-States, V-Droop, spread spectrum and so on. I suspect some of these features constantly interrupt the power supply of the motherboard and caused interference to the soundcard. But all of these are analog interferences and only affect analog I/Os of the soundcard, they won't affect CD ripping.


OK, so this interference is in playback only, not ripping.  That is what I needed to know.

Thanks all.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #31 –
Its probably just the system pulsing the PSU for a couple amps and causing the supply voltage to drop slightly.  Then the power regulation on the sound card should be able to but is not quite able to filter that out, so a bit shows up on the analog out. 

Some combination of a better power supply or better analog design on the sound device would likely eliminate it.  Then again, you probably shouldn't run massive GPU compute jobs will making sensitive analog recordings anyway.

Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #32 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Once gear gets beyond 100 dB dynamic range, it is hard to come up with practical (audible) reasons to go further.


How about an active speaker setup using a multi-channel soundcard as crossover?
This can easily cost as much as 20 dB of dynamic range.

Then let's reduce the volume 12 dB further as we don't have an analog pre-amp...





 

Re: Busy PC vs idle PC

Reply #34 –
Quote from: sshd on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Once gear gets beyond 100 dB dynamic range, it is hard to come up with practical (audible) reasons to go further.

How about an active speaker setup using a multi-channel soundcard as crossover?
This can easily cost as much as 20 dB of dynamic range.

Which proves nothing without confirming numbers. Is the 20 dB change from 120 dB to 100 dB, or 100 dB to 80 dB. Not that either situation is actually a problem.

I also doubt the claim, as most sound card output voltages vary over the range of from 1 volt to 8 volts, usually more like 4 to 6 volts at the max. None of those are as much as 20 dB which is 10.


Quote
Then let's reduce the volume 12 dB further as we don't have an analog pre-amp...

Another potentially irrelevant issue.  For openers, what exactly is a digital preamp? Seems like an oxymoron because there's nothing to amplify because everything is referenced to FS, not a voltage.  Then the analog output that corresponds to FS can be anything that someone designs into the device. The analog outputs corresponding to FS can and does vary considerably from device to device.