OS preference for Music Server

[music33]

I guess what I am getting at is the 3930k requires 130W and is about 4 years old.  With some of the new energy efficient chips, they only need 4.5 watts.  And over those 4 years, Peter has also made dramatic improvements with the software and 'client-server' (music and audio PC) topology is now being advocated.  With these things in mind, perhaps a low energy audio PC should be conceived with a LPSU ;-) 
thanks, dave

[christoffe]

With some of the new energy efficient chips, they only need 4.5 watts. 

Hi,
what is this for a CPU?

My intention is to use this one plus a LPSU with the RAM OS:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4790S+%40+3.20GHz

Joachim

[music33]

yes, CPU.
A decent read of where Intel is going with CPU's over the next year.
http://wccftech.com/intel-2016-roadmap-leaked-confirms-kaby-lakes-10-core-broadwelle-apollo-lake-processors/
Dave

[PeterSt]

Hmm ... Dave ...

I see nothing of real interest in those new CPU's. But it's my guess you look at it differently than I do.
Of course you can aim for low wattage CPU's but I think I already said that if that would be the aim, we would be using it long ago. I feel that you don't get that it would work all right, but does not sound (at all). Joachim linked to a page where I seem to talk to myself a lot, but please read it, if you did not already. Not only that one post, but the ones under it as well.

On a side note : I don't know what my 3930K is using for power, but since the whole PC will be at 45W or so (I must look into that since the OS is in RAM only) it's maybe 30Watts. This is during playback (32/705600). So if it is about that ...

3930 (or its newer variant for LGA2011, 4930) is a few years old indeed. What LGA2011-3 brings is 4 lane memory (was 3). So, useful, but required for totally nothing that I can see (possibly the CPU can run at a lower frequency now, but I don't know how to make it lower than I can at this moment (230MHz). The new 6900 brings nothing more that I can see. 6950 brings two more cores, so can be useful indeed. But mind the $. And don't forget xeon already does the same and way more (for way more $).

If a processor bares less Wattage, it also doesn't do something what is needed. Only the smaller footprint (like 14nm now) implies less usage (theoretically) but what we do with that is get ourselves more cores again and what we just gained, was lost again (for power usage).

It is 100 times more important that we can use such a processor at ~500MHz (instead of 3GHz+) which no laptop CPU is going to accomplish. So this is about all the extra features in the processor which comsume power, instead of saving energy by leaving out things (which now slow down). For that matter it is even more crucial to have a motherboard which allows for this. I mean, no Asus will allow under 1200MHz, but our LGA2011(-3) ASRock's do ...

At least this is my personal idea about this, but hey ...


Regards,
Peter

PS: In the mean time I see that we're quite explicitly off topic. Look at the title ... haha (but no probem, in this case).

[acg]

Hi Dave,

The real client-server thing goes like this :

I am on the Audio PC which is playing music, then I think "oh wait, I want to look for more Ray Brown's" and next I hand a command to the Server to sort out what's all available - that Server being connected to the Internet while the Audio PC surely is not, and the Server calling me (the Audio PC) back with the results. Nothing disturbed the Audio PC here, except for a few bytes the Audio PC sent out with the command and the few bytes the result occupies as was asynchronously returned by the Server (the result actually only messaging that things are ready to look at on the Server('s, hey, disk).
What next happens is that I choose for Albums to be prepared out of that result list which thus resides on the Server like all resides there, and after that command is handed out it may be after 5 minutes that I'm called back with an "All ready !". Or after 20 seconds that Album A is ready to be played; it is available like all else on the server.

Now, besides we can now see a real reason for a client (Audio PC) and a server (Music Server PC) to exist, we can also see some additional "tutorial", because it requires a few more Settings to set. Example below (field at the bottom). And with some TCP knowledge you can see that the communication is setup "internally" just the same, as 127.0.0.1 is the Local Address. So the Client-Server principle has been set up for in-PC processes and tasks just the same.

Technically this is all working already, including a nice protocol. It is only yesterday that I started working on the first real functionality for it, which indeed is Tidal. So in XXHighEnd 2.06 this will be there.

It is my intention that working exclusively from a Tablet, all can be done in integrated fashion. That some tasks are performed on the Music Server PC you will not notice. It is like you performed them on the Audio PC and that the Audio PC under the hood is dealing with them. But instead the Music Server PC does and Audio Quality remains 100% untouched, playing meanwhile).

Peter

Peter, this all sounds quite nice and very welcome.  

From a "whole system" point of view I would have thought that the best thing to do would be to do all of the Tidal searching and file manipulation from the Server and leave the AudioPC to do not much at all, not even RDP into it.  I do not understand how you can be RDP'd from your tablet into the AudioPC and be searching Tidal from there while music is playing in Unattended...I thought only one RDP session could be active at a time.  Are you sending the Tidal search data from the Server to the AudioPC in realtime, while the music is playing?  On paper the better way would be to do all the work on the Server and just have a slimmed down version of XXHE on the AudioPC that grabs the music files as needed and accepts play/stop/pause/volume/etc. commands from the Server.

Does this make any sense?

Cheers,

Anthony  

EDIT:  I think I understand "how" you are doing the Tidal stuff mechanically, but not really "why" you are doing it that way

[acg]

3930 (or its newer variant for LGA2011, 4930) is a few years old indeed. What LGA2011-3 brings is 4 lane memory (was 3). So, useful, but required for totally nothing that I can see (possibly the CPU can run at a lower frequency now, but I don't know how to make it lower than I can at this moment (230MHz). The new 6900 brings nothing more that I can see. 6950 brings two more cores, so can be useful indeed. But mind the $. And don't forget xeon already does the same and way more (for way more $).

As you know, I have Pete's XXHE PC here with the 3930K (I assume) and I have stripped it of non-essential hardware and added the Silverstone, RAM-OS, BIOS mods, fan mods etc. to get it identical to my PC but with the i7 instead of my Xeon cpu.

I have not done any proper listening to compare, and I will do soon, but first impressions are that the Xeon sounds better.  Not sure why...larger caches...more cores...blind luck...placebo, but those are my impressions whilst setting up the hardware.

[PeterSt]

From a "whole system" point of view I would have thought that the best thing to do would be to do all of the Tidal searching and file manipulation from the Server and leave the AudioPC to do not much at all, not even RDP into it.

Anthony,

That is exactly what I tried to say. So somewhere this must be a "mis print". But there will something be (wrong) in this :

I thought only one RDP session could be active at a time.

Apart from tweaking, true.
But I never said anything about two being active. Your "RDP into it" puzzles me a bit, though.

The Music Server is the actual controlling machine (because the last in the chain) of the Audio PC. So that "RDP's" into the Audio PC. This must be, because else there is no connection hence no control. And / however, because we want to remote control the Audio PC, there's RDP in the first place; That we do this by means of a tablet that itself controls the Music Server, is only obfuscating - but no big deal (once you understand the principle).

Point (of misunderstanding ?) is that we have the Audio PC at our fingertips and it is there where we see all of our context, like that one album of Randy Newman missing in our library, and thus want to have that from Tidal. Thus, Audio PC gives the (under the hood) command to the Music Server PC which arranges for that, and messages back a "done !" to the Audio PC, we're still looking at. Now :

What you might envision is the non-sense of being at the Audio PC and we just as well see the Music Server PC to arrange for Tidal stuff directly;
Yes, that can be done, obviously. But now three things are not nice :

1. When I switched to the Music Server's screen I see that and not my Audio PC's screen (while I *am* listening to tracks and like to see which etc.);
2. When I need to change the volume etc. I need to switch to the Audio PC (but something could be made for *that* now, theoretically);
3. How to load the received album from Tidal ? Push it ??

Ad 3.
In the past I tried a few things with that too but it is almost moot and therefore not worth the effort. The really only difference in the end would be the RDP connection not needed and a somewhat more lean connection (which has to be there anyway). And to keep in mind : this is not streaming as such from the music server; it is downloading from it, disconnect that part (RDP remains) and play.

When we remain at the Audio PC all is in my view much simpler plus it is there already.

Peter