I have an old Atom based Netbook circa 2009 as my main playing PC (JMark 470) and an I5 server (Jmark 2559). I do not have a direct answer for you but here is my experience using the Netbook for hi rez. To start, I would add that you need a server with a Jmark of over 3000 to do real time conversion to 2x DSD.
For CDs (44/16) I have not problem using MC client/server to play files from a server. However, when I went to 192/24 and 2X DSD, I often had delays that caused hiccups using client server. I am doing this wirelessly and am not sure if the problem is the wireless or an occasional slight delay from the server. Note this is just transferring files, not converting anything. My server is an couple of year old I5 (Jmark of 2559). You will need something faster to do on the fly conversion to 2x DSD. I also tried having the Netbook attach to the server drive directly, without MC client/server, and again I had occasional dropouts.
For hirez, I am now using my Netbook (Jmark 470) stand alone with a usb 3.0 drive, but usb 2.0 port, for the hi rez files. Even then, I had troubles playing 192/24 and 2X DSD files without hiccups at track startup and when the buffer reloads. It might do better with usb 3.0, which I think your device has. The main trouble was the initial load of a track. I ended up adding 3 seconds of silence to the end of each track, two seconds of silence at the start of each track, having a 2 second gap, and setting the pre-buffering quite low. It works fine now, but it took some careful setup. My hirez is mostly from digitizing my vinyl, so I have the option to add silence at the beginning and end of each track. Just increasing the gap did not always work, since if there was a very short silence at the end of a track, the preload would hiccup at the end of the track.
Your new atom processor is faster than my old Netbook and you have usb 3.0 for drives. So, playing hirez files from a local usb drive should be doable. However, even trying to serve hirez files over client/server may be problematic, with occasional dropouts. With your faster PCs and a faster network, you might be OK. However, if you are also converting to DSD on the fly, you might still be in for problems if the server is taxed dong the conversion. Given the cheap price of disk space these days, converting to DSD files may be better than doing it on the fly for a client server setup.
I have been experimenting recently with using Gizmo to access my server system and play the files on my client Netbook. That seems to work better than using MC client/server, although I do not know exactly why. I need to look into this some more. although as a general solution is not viable, since I do not want to be tied to my cell phone as an interface. This still gives dropouts. I must have been lucky when I tried it before.
Those are some of my experiences using a very slow player PC. My guess is you might be able to get the setup to work, but it may take some work and you may have to give up on doing the conversion on the fly on the server.
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Topic: Streaming DSD, media network and where to put your CPU? (Read 2484 times)