DSD playing gets CPU to high %

Help and Support Help
1

Hi,

I now have my Volumio primo (V1) tinkerboard based fresh install with volumio latest version with only spotify plugin.

I have an USB HDD with my music library with flac (PCM) from 44.1K/16 → 192K/24 and DSD64 & 128.

When playing music, I check my CPU usage (used to do it when I had peppymeter and/or fusionDSP and had droupouts and glitches playing DSD files), and the thing goes more or less like this:

Playing:
idle → CPU around 0%-0,1%
PCM 44.1K/16 → CPU around 0-0,5%
PCM 88,2K/24 → CPU around 1-2%
PCM 96K/24 → CPU around 0,2-1%
PCM 192K/24 → CPU around 0,2-1%
DSD64 → CPU around 5-10% (and I already saw peeks around 20-30% overall and 60-70% on individual CPU).

I use the top command.

Just wonder if this is normal (DSD CPU usage) and if you get these kind of differences in other platforms (e.g. RPi).

I have no issues with this CPU usage under this configuration but if I want to use FusionDSP and/or peppymeter I have dropouts in music due to overall CPU usage (it gets above 90% overall).

Thanks
Paulo

2

PS - I’m using optical output from Volumio Primo so I believe there is somes DSD->PCM conversion (is this done on the DAC board?!).

3

DSD can’t be used with a Dsp (not only FusionDsp) without PCM conversion.
Si, yes there’s a mandatory conversion done.