LMS on different PC's?

[mashley]

I had a PC based problem with clicking through my speakers, streaming LMS through my desktop back along. And went over to usung my laptop exclusively.

I stopped using the desktop as my music server until today, now I'm running the newest LMS have removed and re-installed all my network drivers etc. Everything seems to be working "OK."

It occurred to me at one point as most probably unlikely since the Transporter has a buffer, but, would it be possible for one PC to actually stream music "better" than the other, because it's faster, newer, different drivers etc, leading to improved fidelity?

[Mnyb]

No, as long as the server is good enough to fill the player buffer , that's one core idea behind the squeezebox .
It is independent of audio drivers etc on the PC .

However the browsing experience and responsiveness vary greatly with servers and some low end NAS ones with arm or RISC CPU can't handle the transcoding utilities that comes with LMS, thus limiting the choice of file formats and radio stations .

Plugin use and transcoding ups the demands on the server, this may cause dropouts if the servers is weak .

There is a fad on this forum to let the server transcode flac files to PCM before sending to the player avoid that if your concerned about server load . However the transporter may get glitches with 24/96 flac content with to high compression level ( maxing out it's CPU ) the solution is the to convert to flac with less compression try level -5 or -0 for the paranoid.

However everything sounds fine up to the limit where an artefact can be heard snap crackles and hiss etc .

If you want to test the system without server impact , you can pull out the Ethernet cable and listen to the 30 seconds stored in the player buffer .

In very rare cases there can be actual electrical interference, but that would not be easy to predict for anyone here .

[mashley]

Thanks for the informative answer..

[Archimago]

Excellent answer Mnyb...

On a side note, is anyone still experiencing crackles and pops with high level FLAC compression up to the standard level 8? On my server system, I generally encode with dBpoweramp at FLAC -8 including 24/96 and haven't noticed an issue in years that I would attribute to Transporter CPU load issues.

[garym]

Excellent answer Mnyb...

On a side note, is anyone still experiencing crackles and pops with high level FLAC compression up to the standard level 8? On my server system, I generally encode with dBpoweramp at FLAC -8 including 24/96 and haven't noticed an issue in years that I would attribute to Transporter CPU load issues.

I believe a firmware update a year or so ago resolved the transporter 24/96 -8 issue.