That requires tighter integration with the hardware as the software would need to have a sufficient amount of RAM available to accommodate an entire playlist.
Sound would be degraded while the buffer is being filled so some might argue it’s best to only fill the buffer during the silence between tracks. That doesn’t leave room for too large of a buffer.
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Yes it’s true you would need a reasonable amount of RAM to start with. I personally use 32G which is enough for many Redbook albums and can even fit an entire 512k album. The playlist I construct for the purpose of a listening session isn’t usually that large. Mostly 5-20 tracks per session and it’s a mix of locally stored and Tidal/Qobuz tracks.
The concept of a Euphony buffered playlist is to do the entire buffering prior to the start of the first song. So there is no network data during playback. For normal 44.1K resolution files it’s takes a second per track only to buffer. Tidal a little slower and Qobuz the slowest at say 3 seconds each. Not really much of a wait in total, mostly the buffering is complete in under a minute.
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I guess I should ask how that impacts playback. Do you have to wait for the playlist to be consumed before it starts to play?
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When I say consumed I meant that the entire playlist has been played. And not during the loading of the music into the RAM.
When I say the power down occurs, it’s not the entire motherboard, it’s only the LAN card/section of the board.
This way there is no network influence during playback and with the LAN card powered down, there is less electrical activity.
The steps are:
1 - select some tracks from local, Tidal or Qobuz into a playlist queue
2 - click the buffer and play button
3 - wait for the data to enter the ram
4 - once the loading is complete the LAN card (or part of the motherboard) powers down
5 - Playback of the queue starts. There is no music control
6 - once the queue finishes, the LAN powers back on and music controls work again
7 - optional: you can interrupt this by physically pressing the Pink Faun power button which causes the LAN to power back up. I never do this, mostly sit back, relax and enjoy the music. It’s a good feeling to remove controls during playback actually, less fiddling and more in the moment like in a real concert.