CPU Utilization by Volumio 2

Hi Michelangelo,
Sorry if this has been asked but I can’t find the information in the forum. What is the CPU utilization on the Raspberry Pi 3 or 2?

I am also toying with the idea using a B+ as it draws less power than a Pi 2. The question is whether there is enough processing power for Volumio.

Ed

Hi Ed, speaking from personal experience over a couple of years, I would say that the earlier Pi s struggle a bit. Nothing you can’t live with, but I certainly now use RPi 2 and 3 as my main devices.

Thanks mate! I am given an impression that Volumio CPU utilization is low, so the B+ might work. :wink:

Hi, Volumio 1.5x is capable of running on the original Pi like the B+.

But Volumio 2 needs the CPU power and memory of a Pi 2 or 3. It does not run on a B+ ! If you still have to buy a Pi, go for the 3.

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I’m using volumio 2 since the beginning with a RPI b+. Even Spotify connect plugin. Everything is working fine for me.

Likewise: Volumio2 (& plugins) runs very well on the tiny PiZero; never encountered any performance issue. (the best 5€ ever spent)

I’m running my main (the one in the living room) Volumio device (using Spotify Connect on a daily basis) on a B (not even the plus model). Because I had bought the ‘old’ Hifiberry Digi first. Must say I don’t even reboot and it crashed only once (didn’t investigate because it only happened once).

All testing my is done on Pi2 and Pi3, but mainly because updating package lists and so on takes forever on the Pi1. :wink:

I can overclock my B+ to 950MHz but somehow that is still slower than my Pi Zero W. If you are not using audio resampling then the B+ should work fine. My Pi zero W is unbearably slow if I set the Resampling Algorithm Quality tp “Very high” but works well with “high” setting.

If you look at the CPU load (ssh top) of a volumio installation on a raspberry you will find a very low load far below 5% - if you do not use samba or database actualisation at the same time. And you have to keep in mind that the main activity (audio encoding) is not taking place on the Arm CPU of the Raspberry but on the Multimedia DSP - and this is not visible with top !

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The audio resample is actually done by Soxr library which runs on the CPU and that’s why I said my RPi Zero W struggles with the very high setting. It has no problem at all when audio resampling is off.

With my Raspberry1 i had little stuttering when a track at Spotify switches to the next one.

I overclocked via raspi-config to the high profile (950Mhz) and everything runs smooth now!