seanadams;227600 Wrote: > I hate to add fuel to this ridiculous fire, but you're actually > incorrect on this point. In many microcontroller systems, the CPU does > spin in a loop when there is nothing to do, possibly polling pins or > just "actively doing nothing" while it waits for an interrupt. You're > correct that the power usage during this kind of spinning is no > different from doing useful work. However, this is not what Squeezebox > does. > > Although the Squeezebox CPU has no true power management features like > a laptop or PDA might have, it does in fact use slightly less power > when idle, because it is event driven at the hardware level. It is > running eight hardware threads, each of which only executes > instructions when there is work to be done. When a thread has no more > work to do, it issues a suspend instruction which halts it until it is > sent an interrupt from another thread telling it to resume. Since CMOS > logic uses very little power when static, there is some reduction in > amperage. Also the PHY and SDRAM are going to use more power simply due > to more data going between them. > > However, the notion that CPU usage materially impacts the audio > circuits one way or another is not supported by any controlled > listening test or measurements - both of which have been done. I give > zero credit to someone who latches on to some abstruse phenomenon like > this, but refuses to actually put their theory to the test.
Even though I am the one who brought up the fact that the Squeezebox would draw very slightly more power when decoding FLAC I personally don't believe that this would cause any audible effects. I am glad that Sean clarified the fact that the SB does indeed draw slightly more power when decoding FLAC since someone was disputing this. There are all kinds of claims about people hearing differences in things that really shouldn't matter but who knows. Personally I think that it is most likely the placebo effect. On the other hand I have the attitude if it works for you than have fun with it. If you want to spend more money on a power supply for a device than the device itself and to you it sounds better then enjoy it. If you think that your $1000 interconnects make a huge difference, it's your money so have fun with it. I've personally bought fairly mid-fi equipment and have been very happy with it but I do spend a lot on speakers because to me they make the largest difference. I actually do hear difference between a lot of equipment (such as amplifiers) but to me they just sound 'different' from each other and one doesn't necessarily sound 'better' than the other except for my individual taste. Anyway, I think that people tend to get too emotional about all of this stuff. Enjoy your equipment, but more importantly, enjoy the music. -- fred7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ fred7's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=6523 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38258 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
