[mcullinan]

I got a Terrabyte external HD with an esata connection($140). Bought a $50 esata pcie card for my mac.  It hits 80+ GB/ sec. Plenty fast and its one of the slower drives. The faster ones do 100+GB/sec. And if you buy an external RAID.. double that
Mike

I was eyeing this which can be set up to mirror or stripe.
http://www.buy.com/prod/Fantom_G_Force_Megadisk_2TB_RAID_USB_2_0_eSATA_External_Hard_Drive/q/loc/273/206729332.html

[konut]

Guys, I might be WAAAAY outta line here, but have you configured your OS for optimizing audio?

http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php

http://www.audiocourses.com/article309.html

These are just examples. A Google search will yield a plethora of choices. And while most refer to using computers as recording systems, the recommendations apply to getting rid of unwanted processes that inhibit throughput for streaming audio. Just a thought.

[kenreau]

Guys, I might be WAAAAY outta line here, but have you configured your OS for optimizing audio?

http://www.audioforums.com/windows-vista-optimization.php

http://www.audiocourses.com/article309.html

These are just examples. A Google search will yield a plethora of choices. And while most refer to using computers as recording systems, the recommendations apply to getting rid of unwanted processes that inhibit throughput for streaming audio. Just a thought.

Thanks Konut, looks like great set up info.  In particular, I just noticed in the recommendations:


It's important to realize that the minimum is never the recommended configuration for a DAW. Here are Vista's recommended requirements:

1 GHz processor (x64 if you are using a 64-bit edition of Vista)
1 GB RAM


Here's what's additionally recommended to ensure smooth operation of your DAW:

2 GHz multi-core processor **
2 GB RAM
80 GB of available system drive hard disk space, separate physical system and audio drives, with drive speeds of 7200 RPM. It!s common to see configurations with an 80GB system drive and additional 200-400GB audio drives for storing samples and session data.

I'm already there with a separate (internal) audio drive.  Looks like an extra 1 GB of RAM is now on my shopping list. 

Thanks,
Kenreau

[konut]

To put a finer point on it, my emphasis is on selecting the optimal settings in the OS, not hardware choices. Squeezecenter/Slimserver is not THAT much of a hardware hog.

[kenreau]

To put a finer point on it, my emphasis is on selecting the optimal settings in the OS, not hardware choices. Squeezecenter/Slimserver is not THAT much of a hardware hog.

Newbuyer posted below "Also, consider changing the priority of your SqueezeCenter to a higher setting and test..."  I'm not certain what this is referring to.  Could you explain?  And/or identify what 2 or 3 optimal OS settings I should implement.

Thanks,
Kenreau

[konut]

I don't know where the higher setting that Newbuyer described is located. I hope he chimes in with how to locate that. As far as optimal OS settings, they're all detailed in those links I posted. Changing visual aspects, disabling Aero, for example. The links detail how to get to the performance and setting panes to optimize the OS for audio. Its been years since I did this with my laptop so I'm at a loss to remember exactly what I did. Its one of the first things I did after getting the computer. Suffice to say, I've never had choppy or intermittent performance. Slimserver has always been snappy for me. Thus was on a 1.73Ghz Centrino with 512 mb of ram running XP. I recently upgraded to 2Gb of ram with no really noticeable increase in performance. Faster boot up and shut down, for sure, but negligible otherwise.

[mgalusha]

Newbuyer posted below "Also, consider changing the priority of your SqueezeCenter to a higher setting and test..."  I'm not certain what this is referring to.  Could you explain?  And/or identify what 2 or 3 optimal OS settings I should implement.

I would be very hesitant to change the priority. Unless there is something else beating up the machine SC should be able to get enough processor resources. What he is referring to is the ability to assign priorities to certain processes in Windows. Most of the time this is not necessary or desired. Permanently assigning a high priority can make the machine very unresponsive for other tasks.

I believe it's not so much Squeezecenter that is slow but the web UI. Lots of JavaScript and it's just flat bloated in comparison to the older "classic" UI. The classic UI is 167KB of which 114K is JavaScript. The SC default UI is 977KB with 677KB of JavaScript, almost 6X the size of the old skin. Your browser has to compile and execute all the JS and that takes a lot of CPU cycles.

Try changing the UI before you try anything else.

mg

[NewBuyer]

I think I will buy another GB of RAM and see what that does. 

Could you explain the changing the priority of SC to a higher setting?  not familiar with that.

Thank you,
Kenreau

Hi Kenreau,

Right-click taskbar -> Processes -> Right-click an entry -> Set Priority.

Mike suggests in general not changing these priorities, and in general (with most Windows processes) this is fine advice.  However, specifically the SqueezeCenter executable can certainly be set to "High" (I wouldn't go to Realtime) with no issues, even on a non-dedicated machine.  Worth verifying that the priority is up there - in fact it may now install to a High priority by default(?).  Regardless, this is precisely why Windows gives the ability to change these priorities.  If your SC isn't currently set at High priority already, give it a try and test - it won't hurt anything.  The extra RAM should certainly help too, without a doubt in my opinion.

If these don't cause a noticeable improvement, we can try other things too.

[satfrat]

As a side question, how hard is it to change RAM? I have 1024mb (2 512mb) but I have no idea what it would take to upgrade them in my HTPC or even how to find them but would surely like to and be able to do it myself if possible. I'm sorta computer illiterate but I did just replace the Arctic Silver on my CPU monday so I'm not afraid to pop the top. Thanks.


Cheers,
Robin

[randytsuch]

I believe it's not so much Squeezecenter that is slow but the web UI. Lots of JavaScript and it's just flat bloated in comparison to the older "classic" UI. The classic UI is 167KB of which 114K is JavaScript. The SC default UI is 977KB with 677KB of JavaScript, almost 6X the size of the old skin. Your browser has to compile and execute all the JS and that takes a lot of CPU cycles.

Try changing the UI before you try anything else.

mg

Thanks for the advice Mike
I just changed my skin to "Light".
It is much faster now, with both my laptop and my Nokia.
I thought my server was underpowered, but things are much better now.

Randy

[Bob in St. Louis]

Good to hear things are better, but I was wondering if you had Norton/McAffe type thing running in the background slowing things down?
If so, try disabling it and see what happens.

Bob

[JoshK]

If my audio PC wasn't dead as a doornail I'd try the classic UI.  That would probably do it for me.

I have had absolutely the worst luck with PCs in the last few years.  I came back from a quick vacation to WA and my audio PC won't turn on.  I checked the power switch it works fine.  Probably a cap was fried on the mobo.

I have 3 PCs + laptop in my house.  The laptop is fine now but had been giving huge problems before.  The oldest desktop hangs all the time and need hard reboot.   The brand new PC which was built from a list of top compatibility parts off a website blue screens and reboots on itself ~2x daily.  The error list doesn't point to anything helpful.  The audio PC which is in between is kaput.

[JoshK]

This looks like a cool solution.

Model
Brand Western Digital
Model WDA4NC20000N
Spec
Port USB 3 x USB2.0
Form Factor 4-Bay
Capacity 2TB
RAID RAID 0, 1, 5
Temperature 5°C - 35 °C
Features
Features Small-footprint, 4-bay system
Gigabit Ethernet
Easy setup and discovery
E-mail alert system
Active Directory support
Push a button to transfer data from a USB drive
Automatic network backup software (for up to 3
Remote access with MioNet
Download manager
iTunes server
Windows Vista ready
FTP server

Only thing that makes me weary is it is pretty new.  Not a lot of feedback yet. 

I like the idea of having your audio stuffs on drives that can be accessed from any PC on the network without having to have one PC on all the time.

[yammy1688]

I'm still using a readyNAS NV+ with 1GB ram.  SLOW, but oh well. 

[mcullinan]

This looks like a cool solution.

Model
Brand Western Digital
Model WDA4NC20000N
Spec
Port USB 3 x USB2.0
Form Factor 4-Bay
Capacity 2TB
RAID RAID 0, 1, 5
Temperature 5°C - 35 °C
Features
Features Small-footprint, 4-bay system
Gigabit Ethernet
Easy setup and discovery
E-mail alert system
Active Directory support
Push a button to transfer data from a USB drive
Automatic network backup software (for up to 3
Remote access with MioNet
Download manager
iTunes server
Windows Vista ready
FTP server

Only thing that makes me weary is it is pretty new.  Not a lot of feedback yet. 

I like the idea of having your audio stuffs on drives that can be accessed from any PC on the network without having to have one PC on all the time.

It looks cool but USB2 is slower that Firewire 400, and esata blazes both. Go esata or go home.
Not sure how the gigabit ethernet would hold up though... Let me check. Ok Gig Ethernet is 1000MB per sec while esata is 3GB or 3000 MB sec
Mike

[JoshK]

I was thinking it was a standalone NAS. 

[mcullinan]

I was thinking it was a standalone NAS. 

I guess it is...
What are the advantages of a NAS versus an external HD? Im not sure.
Mike

[zybar]

I was thinking it was a standalone NAS. 

I guess it is...
What are the advantages of a NAS versus an external HD? Im not sure.
Mike

In simple terms:

NAS attches directly to the network and is available for all devices on that network.

An external drive is attached to a host and is available to that host (yes I know it can be shared across your Windows network).

George

[randytsuch]

I guess it is...
What are the advantages of a NAS versus an external HD? Im not sure.
Mike

With a NAS, you can just hook up the Ethernet port to your network, and then you can access the files from any PC on your network.  
So, it's a convenient way to get at files from any PC on the network.

There are some NAS's that people have hacked into, to run slimserver on the NAS.

But, when I was looking at it, a NAS was a lot more expensive then building a cheap PC to run slimserver.
Here is a link to a thread I started a while back, on my homebuilt NAS
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=32511.0

Since it's running Linux, and all it does is run slimserver, you don't need a high powered machine.
The processor/motherboard I used is obsolete now (at least from newegg), but I'm sure there is faster stuff now.  I'm not sure if I would use a Via if I was building it now, or an Intel Atom or a AMD processor.  You can find all of them for under $100 for a micro ATX motherboard and processor with graphics built it.

Randy

[kenreau]

My squeezecenter interface is really slow and I've been wondering what to investigate.

Starting squeezecenter takes +/- 20 seconds and scrolling through the A, B, C, database sorting in annoyingly slow (several seconds). 

My OS and squeezecenter are on my primary drive, a 500GB (C:) drive.  All my music is on another internal hard drive.  I currently have roughly 600 albums, all in wav files on a 1TB internal drive (D:).  It is roughly 65% full.

My CPU is an Intel P-4 (with HT) 3.4 gHz something and I have 1 GB of ram.  Would it speed things up if I added another GB of ram (for total of 2 GB) ? 

Any suggestions to speed things up would be appreciated.

Thx
Kenreau

Hey Kenreau, I don't consider myself a technology expert but if I had to guess, adding some more RAM might make a minor difference but not a huge one.  I would think that a lot of the slowness is due to the fact that you're playing .wav files, which are several times larger than FLAC files (which I use).  How do you connect to your network with your Squeezecenter PC?  Wireless or wired?  Other things you might investigate are your router speed. 

Just providing a work in progress update on my Squeezecenter slow interface issues.  I plugged in the 2GB sticks of ram and experienced a reasonable increase in speed as noted earlier. 

I'm still a SC rookie and wanted to move on to getting my album folders organized, adding album art work, pandora, radio stations etc.  Another issue I've had, not mentioned previously, is that only a small fraction of my music files can be accessed directly from my Transporter.  IE - if it use my SC running on the desktop pc, I can see and select all 900+ music folders.  When in the listening room and operating from the TP, I can only see and select roughly 60 music folders.

I ended up calling slimdevices/logictech tech support to address some of these tasks and ended up learning the source of my slow processing & related issues is due to using WAV files and thier lack of information tags.  I currently have ~960 albums loaded.  The tech said that the lack of music file tags with the wav. files is at the center of my frustrating issues.  Recommended solution was converting to FLAC files.

So, next task is to pursue converting my dedicated hard drive of wav files into FLAC files with tags.  Agghhh, another learning curve.

All my wav files were backed up to my hard drive via EAC.  I used the uncompressed format with the EAC associated database for album names.  I do keep an outboard backup drive that I plan to keep in wav format and just get the internal music drive migrated in to the FLAC format.

Any recommendations out there for making the FLAC file conversion?  Is there a means to automatically get the necessary file tags along with this process (I pray so...).


Thanks,
Kenreau