wildgoose;570381 Wrote: > I installed SC on my computer, and the Touch did respond much faster and > I experienced no slow down. > > I do think that some of the slowness I experienced with the SB when > running off a SC from a slow system can be improved significantly. > > For example, when I press 'shuffle', 'repeat', or do volume adjustment, > the reason it feels very sluggish is because the UI is not asynchronous. > The UI only seems to get updated after the SB gets a response back from > SC. This is probably not the best design. If it takes a long time to > get an ACK from SC, then the UI would freeze. > > This can be improved significantly by having the UI in the SB reflect > immediately the user selection, and in the background communicate the > request to the server. This leaves room for optimization such as > command queuing as well. For example, if the user presses shuffles a > few times (to make sure he picks the one he really wants since it's > just an icon representation), the SB only needs to send the end state, > not every state change. In practical terms, the box has until the end > of the current song to communicate this with the server, this could be > minutes so should be plenty of time for this. > > When the SB is originally designed, I guess it's very expensive to put > a lot of computing power on the box, so the server end up doing > everything and the box only have very primitive capabilities. Now that > the SB Touch runs Linux with the SC in it, why not implement a > standalone mode where the SB Touch simply interfaces with a storage by > reading the file directly (local or in a NAS)? Only a small subset of > the SC capabilities needs to be implemented. This would free up the > need to run a PC with SC 24x7 for many people. (sort of like the WDTV > media player but with slightly more capability for music, playlist, > shuffle, repeat, etc..) > > Incorporating SC into the device is a better business decision. IMHO > implement a good standalone mode is a better technical option. It can > basically eliminate some of the advantage of the Sonos system if > reasonable amount of thoughts and works went into it. I think the > current hardware is fully capable of doing this, probably a lot faster > than running the SC within the Touch. Heck why not add DLNA support as > well? > > Basically if you want the original/real SB experience, run a computer > with SC on it. On the other hand if you just want basic music playback > capability, run it in standalone mode. It can read music from either a > NAS location, or the SD card. > > How is the performance with the build-in SC in the Touch? I didn't test > it because the device seems to have no memory left even without starting > the SC service (128mb ram).
Yes, I agree with your suggestion it would be interesting to understand the design pattern implemented as my wired touch does suffer with long unresponsive periods... which can spoil the experience. -- innovstar ------------------------------------------------------------------------ innovstar's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=39031 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81089 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
