I use my 5 year old cheapo PC (DELL Optiplex 790), that I picked up from the trash heap and fixed, to stream ROON to my DAC. Now my streaming sounds pretty amazing because I use a Sonore microRendu. This eliminates the noise in my computer from getting to my DAC. I still have the Ethernet network noise getting into the DAC but that is not that much. For, another $1K I will upgrade to the "OpticalRendu LITE for ROON Only" and that noise goes away too (for the most part).
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/how-to-optimize-digital-streaming-with-optical-fiber/ So I thought I should be in good shape once I get the opticalRendu. However, recently this audio office computer with ROON was starting to have CPU usage that averages 45%. At this rate of CPU usage, my computer fans come on and my machine is no longer silent. A real bummer for audio. So I am thinking I need a new more powerful processor for my mostly audio only PC. Normally my CPU usage is around 10%. I also do some remote desktop via this machine but that hardly uses any CPU.
Well after a bit of testing today I find out it is AUDIOGON.COM that is making all the noise on my computer. With my browser opened up to A’gon the site’s advertisement JavaScript (likely written by monkeys) is jacking up the CPU. I killed the browser running A’gon and CPU is back to my beautiful 10% range and silence again.
So the moral of the story is don’t keep a browser open to A’gon while streaming.
