Hi !

and thank you all for this beautiful new version of Amarok, which works very well here on Debian Sid + KDE 4.2. Phonon is also a great advanced interface to manage audio devices. This was really missing in older platform !

However, I'm just wondering some good reasons for Amarok 2 to take now 50% of my single 1.8 Ghz processor for playing MP3 or FLAC files, whereas 1.4 took only 10% on KDE 3.5... The fact that there are no more explicit visual animations (spectrums, flashy bars..) tells me that there must be some strong internal processes in amarok's background.

Can someone reproduce this ?
Are there any options we can disable to reduce the CPU load ?

Thank's for your help,
YomGuy

Not normal, with the xine Phonon backend and latest Amarok 2 I usually have around 3% CPU or so for Amarok, while playing.

Thanks for your reply Mark.

It seems in fact that the CPU load depends on the devices selected in phonon backend through the System Settings...

The CPU load is growing towards 40% only if I choose my M-Audio USB Transit for all categories. However, it decreases when I choose my Intel ICH6 for some categories. Choosing only the ICH6 or JACK (even with M-Audio), the CPU load is then around 4% like you.

I deduce that my Transit could be buggy with some drivers used by Phonon, without JACK. This is then not a bug of Amarok2 but could be a interesting field to explore in order to better understand the Phonon's behavior using more than 2 audio cards.

Cheers,

On my Pentium III, 800 MHz (SuSE 11.1, KDE 4.1.3):
amarok 1.4:
amarokapp ~ 6.5%; X ~ 9%

amarok 2:
amarok ~ 22%; X ~17%

Athlon X2 2.4 GHz:
Amarok 2 uses 10 % at Ogg Vorbis playback with gstreamer engine, which is _really_ much. And yes, Amarok 1.4 didn't use that much.

Try something for me, to satisfy my curiosity about an issue I'm having on OS X regarding CPU usage...

When you first launch Amarok, clear your playlist, and stop any playing tracks. Check CPU usage. Remove the "Now Playing" applet from the middle panel. Check CPU usage again.

Also, try with the xine backend. Gstreamer is known to be less stable with Amarok at the moment.

If no track is playing, the CPU usage is ~0 %

If no track is playing: X ~ 4,6%; amarok ~ 1-2%
I'm using Xine.

Thanks guys, I'm pretty sure my issue is unrelated.