Zotac microPC for asset ok?

[user2112]

Hi, I'm about to buy a Zotac barebones PC. It will have an atom D510 CPU 1 GB ram and 4x 2TB USB drives.

Will Asset server and control run happily on this Setup?

Ideally I'd like to be running spotify also. Renderers would be KilimaxDS and Various Lacie Lacinema units. ideally I would want to have multiple renderers use the system at the same time.
Cheers.

[Spoon]

Seems ok to me, perhaps a little more ram if you are running Windows 7.

[user2112]

Yes, so far this is looking like a good option. I upgraded RAM to 2GB.

Database scanning is taking forever though - ( I have another thread open for this).

[user2112]

Now that I only use locally attached drives this seems to have been a good way to run asset. However, try as I might, I cannot get WASAPI streamer to snd a good continuous stream to the DS. I get dropouts for a second or so at a time. I've used wireless and gigabit LAN - the same result. cpu is low <50% as is memory. Wireshark sniffer sees a break in the stream for upto 3 seconds sometimes. It works fine from my laptop to the DS (R3 Beta still) just not from this atom PC.
Pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated thanks.

[Spoon]

If it is a dual core cpu then 45% is almost 100% of one of the cores.

[user2112]

I guess so if one cpu is 90% and the other is 0% but that is not the case. I'm now running spotify and streaming to the DS with dropouts and CPU0 is min 20 max 40 for the most part. cpu1 slightly higher. 2 & 3 (Parked) show much lower. Occasionally I see 80% spikes on both CPUs but then there isnt usually a dropout within 30s either side. I notice that dropouts generally get less frequent the longer it is left running.

Droputs occur also with media player so its not spotify. Also the internal (TV) sound has zero dropouts.

I do not get dropouts when streaming from Disk. I have also had a movie running and mediaplayer playing mp3 while streaming from disk with no dropouts. The same running whilst streaming the PC soundcard does not appear to make the dropouts worse.


edit...
I just thrashed the cpus by creating and encrypted drive. I had all CPUs measuring 80%+ with no increase in droputs. When the encryption ceased the CPus dropped off to<25% and dropouts continued in a similar manner as before.

[user2112]

Its difficult to tie up exact droputs to a sniffer trace however I can see this type of message during during 2-3 secon gaps in the stream.

-------------------------------------------------
NOTIFY /event HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.1.106:49832
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Nt: upnp:event
Nts: upnp:propchange
Connection: close
Sid: uuid:4c494e4e-0026-0f21-a73c-e700000401349
Seq: 2193
Content-Length: 141
<?xml version="1.0"?><e:propertyset xmlns:e="urn:schemas-upnp-org:event-1-0"><e:property><Seconds>2087</Seconds></e:property></e:propertyset>HTTP/1.1 200 OK
--------------------------------------------------

Does ths mean anything to you?

[Spoon]

It is just an event, perhaps sent be the player to the control point, the server would not be involved in this event.

[user2112]

Yes, I posted on the linn site too. Same answer. Thnx. Linn suggest looking at the network as usual but in this case there isn't one. It's ok from spotify or media player but not out of the pc interface. No network involved this time.

[user2112]

I have now tried this on 2 atom 510 PCs so have discounted any hardware malfunction.
I am discounting CPU and memory issues because it does not change on higher or lower load of the cpu (unless I max it out).
streaming from flac files held on internal drives is fine.
Interface monitoring shows definite gaps of up to 3 seconds coming FROM the PC interface.
I have connected the DS directly to the PC and also via 2 different switches and different cables. It is not a network fault.
Spotify and media player continue to play through the PC interface so it is not a problem with those application.

so, Mr Spoon, what is happening differently that asset can stream from disk but not from internal sound card without drops?

Where do I look next to get a resolution to this? or do we conclude asset canot run on atom cpus? - I hope not! - I'm sure people have run it up on netbooks. But maybe not the pc card passthrogh bit.

cheers
Steve

[user2112]

DSbridge works fine btw - just tried it - so deffo not the network or spotify

[Spoon]

Perhaps we can conclude that Asset cannot record on Atoms (atleast your model).

[user2112]

cop out!

Although I did expect something a little more constructive. Especially as Ive just spent 130 quid on something specifically to run asset. :(

[Spoon]

It is not possible to debug such, sorry

[user2112]

Fair enough! It's working well with standard asset functionality. DSbridge works for spotify so I've got most of what I want when all said and done.

Thanks Spoon