On 2014-05-15 16:11, Derek Atkins wrote:
Gordan Bobic <gor...@bobich.net> writes:

However you're
right that something like the Wandboard is more powerful. Looks like I
can get a Wandboard Solo + Case + Power for about $100, not quite
double
the cost of the RPi for about 2x the performance.

Indeed. Do you have a form factor preference, though?
Most solutions like this have some uglyness associated, e.g.
an external power brick. D2Plug is a single brick, just
plug into power socket. But performance could conceivably
be an issue.

No, the boxes are going to be hidden in closets.  Having an external
power brick is actually better for heat dissipation, IMHO.

Fair enough. My personal preference is toward reducing the cabling
sprawl.

cheap enough then having one box per zone would be fine.  But I'm not
looking for NAS or anything else today (actually I plan to build a
large
multi-TB NAS server, but it's not going to be ARM-based).

ARM based multi-TB NAS is actually quite doable:

http://www.altechnative.net/2014/02/23/qnap-ts-421-review-modification-and-redsleeve-linux/

I have it running with 4x4TB HGST drives and ZFS (fuse) RAIDZ2.

Sorry, but multi-TB I mean starting with something like 24TB and
expanding out to ~100.  I was planning to build a FreeNAS box for this
using a 4U 24-bay case which requires ~3 PCIe slots.

Fair enough.

So thanks, all. I think I'll order a Wandboard Solo to test this out. I can always select different hardware later, or upgrade to the Dual or
Quad if I find I need more CPU power.  But audio processing doesn't
really require lots of CPU. I was able to do basic DSP functions on my 8-bit 6502-based Atari 800 back in the mid-1980s, with only 48K of RAM.
I'm sure 512MB on an ARM can do much better, provided there is
sufficient design of the board so we don't get electrical interference.

Depending on the form factor you are looking for, there are
ARM boards out there with PCI/PCIe slots. You could get one
of those and use a PCI/PCIe sound card in it. It would be a
lot more expensive, though.

On the cheap, there are always USB audio options. A USB
sound dongle can be had for about £2, and you could plug
that into any ARM device featuring a USB port (i.e. most
of them these days).

Do you have a reference for these USB sound dongles (that are also
supported by Linux/ARM)?  I've not found anything that inexpensive.

I use these with great success on my gaming Windows virtual
machines:

http://amzn.to/1gzLVAX

Never tried using them on Linux, but I'm pretty sure it comes
under the heading of generic USB audio (snd-usb-sudio driver).

At ~ £1.39 it may just be worth a try.

Gordan
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