System optimizations?

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Thanks @swizzle for the links. Looking at that Archimago article it looks like he's suggesting that there is no noise introduced by USB output of the Pi. I use a DAC called the Gamma2... https://www.amb.org/audio/gamma2/ via it's USB input. Any incoming signal is up-sampled and re-clocked to 24/96 automatically and I don't hear any discernible noise, etc.

Using top I'm only apparently using 1% with MPD tops. Looks like I can considerably lower the clock speed, etc. to see if it makes for a more euphonic experience.

Following the links in swizzle's post, I first did the Archmago CRAAP clock changes via the config.txt edits. That netted a nice improvement for me with my Allo Boss dac. I then did the rest of the changes suggested in the other link (Sinski) without adding the changes he suggests to config.txt. I played a number of songs, but Moode was broken. It would start an album selection on apparently random songs rather than the first song, and would stop at the end of a song but not move to the next. I wasn't surprised that it broke, and I do not expect help here as we are making changes beyond the scope of the most diligent support (which Tim certainly provides).  The single-song-only sound quality was wonderful, so I'll attempt to try these mods very incrementally and zero in on what works and what blows things up.

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