I've been in IT since the mid 80's but keep relatively up to date, but I must admit PC specifications are quite important for audio streaming, our edit studios use AVID software and hardware, but Avid specify a very limited range of pc hardware and software /service pack/updates to remain within their supported range of equipment., This currently comprises of HP workstation class hardware with XP Professional SP3 and a limited subset of hot fix and updates, also with a strict choice of firewire and scsi adapters...
What our video studio does is not that dissimilar to our streaming audio from a flex radio device, so while it all works mostly,.. to ENSURE a positive experience we should be guided as to the choice of hardware we make, or at least warned off poor choices.. Those poor choices are most probably hardware manufacturers which do not allow a sufficient range of IRQ assignments to pci or pci/e hardware such as IEE1394 or firewire cards. Using the DCPlat software to give a baseline latency measurement of our hardware/software configurations may only give a starting point, but at least it is somewhere to start from. My own equipment is a flex-3000 and I connect that to my 'old' Acer Aspire M380 of 3 years vintage, using Windows 7 64 bit my average latency figures are 130us after ensuring ONLY essential services are running, as this is a domain connected pc it probably runs more services than most, but at least Acer use a dedicated IRQ for the TI chipset IEEE1394 on-board adapter, I am very lucky in this regard., As an experiment, I dual booted my windows 7 install with XP Pro 32bit, installed Office 2003, HRD v5, Power SDR etc. in other words a radio specific install of my minimum software requirements, maintaining internet access. The measured latency was 12us!!!!!!!!! This is with VAC, DM780, HRD, Outlook 2003, IE8.... I don't expect my windows 7 side to reduce to much less than 100us, but at least it is very usable for all everyday radio work, and I can boot into XP for contests, sporadic E openings on 6m etc.... My Acer is a quite low spec PC, AMD 4200+ processor, 4GB ram, 250Gb SATA drive, probably the main contributor to good performance is a dedicated IRQ for a good quality (onboard) firewire interface... and a fantastic piece of software such as dpclat.exe, without which we would only have the Performance Monitor from Microsoft in Windows 7 (does show DPC latency though). I will follow Neals (http://www.abrohamnealsoftware.com/) suggestions of proven hardware choices where available in the UK, but will test and report on anything else I come across in the course of my work. My next project is a Asus HTPC type PC, great value device only £105, plus AMD processor, ram & hard disk. Has firewire on board, but is it as good as Acers implementation? In short, a lot of us are lucky that we can stream audio without problems, and if you load and install dpclat and it shows you have high latency problems you may feel bad that you were not informed that you needed a more specialised PC... most current PC's will have no problems, but 1+ year old PC's may need some TLC, we might need to start another forum to deal with this aspect. 73 de Steve G6HOQ -----Original Message----- From: flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz [mailto:flexradio-boun...@flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of Jerry Harley Sent: 12 February 2010 22:55 To: flexradio@flex-radio.biz Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Dedicate PC for Flex On 2/12/2010 1:31 PM, Richard M. Emerson wrote: > I have noted with interest the movement among some Flexers to dedicate a PC > soley for their radios. I would like to weigh in on this subject, because I > haven't seen my position represented in the postings. The main reason I > bought an SDR was so that I could have the power of the internet at my finger > tips WITH my radio. If it ever becomes necessary to dedicate a PC to my > Flex, I will become an ex-Flex owner. The company should make radios, as > they currently do, that play nice with the rest of my computer. > > Regards, > > Dick KE7XU > _______________________________________________ > FlexRadio Systems Mailing List > FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz > Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ > Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: > http://www.flex-radio.com/ > > I've been running a tired old Compaq Evo, pentium 4, 2.4 with 768k of memory since I got serial # 25 of the SDR 1000. I'm now running the 5000A with the same OLD computer at 192,000, if i don't run anything else. I run it at 48000 with everything on, HRD,QRZ,eBAY, AND MAYBE gOOGLE eARTH. This has to be one of the worse/weakest computer setups that any one has and it runs JUST FINE. WA2TTI Jerry Can't wait until the 1500 arrives at my door _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned for viruses by www.epagency.net If you consider this email spam, please forward it to s...@epagency.net ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
