- 积分
- 98
- 在线时间
- 60 小时
- 最后登录
- 2021-12-17
- 阅读权限
- 50
- 精华
- 0
- UID
- 845761
- 帖子
- 96
- 精华
- 0
- 经验
- 98 点
- 金钱
- 94 ¥
- 注册时间
- 2018-3-17
|
Normally, setting the filter, noise shaper and installing the driver is a one-time job. After that the user interface is the only thing that sits between music and listener. Sound Galleries' chosen GUI is Roon and we fully applaud that choice. It works like a punctual German train on nearly all platforms, organizes your music library and offers an ideal interface with Tidal and Internet radio stations. On top of that, Roon adds extra information about the music and artists just like a virtual record sleeve with liner notes.
Even though here the Windows 10 Home installation is stripped of all unnecessary and potentially interfering processes and services, the heart of the operating system still remains active. That has its own way of steering the goings-on. This OS is the server's conductor and points its baton at the task to be performed which is then executed in the CPU, the central processing unit. In the SGM 2015, that CPU is an Intel quad-core i7 6700K running at 4.2GHz. Quad core means that the CPU is in fact 4 CPUs packed together to share common things like power/memory access. You might thus assume that such a CPU can do four things more or less simultaneously. Actually, these types of CPU can do eight things at a time due to a technique called hyper-threading. On top of that, tasks/threads can be spread out over the cores such that otherwise idling cores jump in to avoid unnecessarily waiting threads. Intel even offer a Turbospeed option for the CPU to run one core at a higher clock speed over a limited time. Emile tweaked this feature so that all the CPU cores run at that 4.2GHz Turbospeed all of the time as long as HQPlayer is active.
As mentioned, the Windows conductor has a bit of its own mind to assign priorities to certain tasks. From an operating system perspective that's grand but not for a demanding audiophile application like HQPlayer. Roon too is demanding in its CPU-loading behaviour. HQPlayer wants things done in real time and Roon wants quick responses as well. The Sound Galleries team learnt that this caused too many priority conflicts, hence audio degradation when Windows control was allowed to operate in standard fashion. Enter Process Lasso Pro [below]. This piece of add-on software handles thread schedules over the available CPU cores more intelligently and purpose-specific than the Windows default. Now settings can be tailored for specific uses. For their HQPlayer + Roon rivalry, the Sound Galleries team dedicated two CPU cores to Roon, six to HQPlayer. Both applications are multi-threaded to where Roon and HQPlayer run over 100 joint threads.
We had our review samples of SGM 2015 servers and T+A DAC 8 hand-delivered by Geoff Armstrong and Emile Bok. Edward Hsu had other business to take care of. With dimensions of 48x43X17cm, their music server is sized like a full desktop computer but its weight of 35kg has mainframe aspirations. Because we don't own a DSD512-capable DAC, the T+A became part of our loaner care package. Sound Galleries deliver all of their SGM music servers preinstalled to the customer with all the required software including drivers for the user's DAC. Furthermore, Sound Galleries offer a remote trouble shooting and upgrade service. Should a user run into trouble of any kind, a member of the SGM team can, with the user's permission, access the server via TeamViewer remotely, install a new driver when a different DAC is to be used, aid in selecting the best settings for HQPlayer and solve any other issues. This bespoke service comes as a subscription. |
|