There is a strong tendency in the audiophile community to minimize processing on a dedicated audio PC as much as possible.
There is a rationale, any process not running cannot kick in and causes a dropout.
However, the claims are much bolder. Killing system services, disabling network drivers, swapping a HD by a SSD, etc. etc all have a profound impact on sound quality.
The idea is that all electrical activity has a negative impact on sound quality. Hence, if you minimize this sound quality should improve.
Archimago did some interesting experiments.
He measured the jitter using adaptive & asynchronous USB and Toslink.
Both under (unspecified) normal conditions and with the CPU and GPU running at 100%.
His jitter test most of all demonstrate the very low impact of a 100% CPU/GPU load on jitter.
http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2013_03_01_archive.html
There is a rationale, any process not running cannot kick in and causes a dropout.
However, the claims are much bolder. Killing system services, disabling network drivers, swapping a HD by a SSD, etc. etc all have a profound impact on sound quality.
The idea is that all electrical activity has a negative impact on sound quality. Hence, if you minimize this sound quality should improve.
Archimago did some interesting experiments.
He measured the jitter using adaptive & asynchronous USB and Toslink.
Both under (unspecified) normal conditions and with the CPU and GPU running at 100%.
His jitter test most of all demonstrate the very low impact of a 100% CPU/GPU load on jitter.
http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2013_03_01_archive.html