Software media players tricks and tips

[Gazjam]

My experience is the opposite. The 'extra load' is fairly trivial. Try using Task Manager in Windows and go the processes tab. Foobar shows 0% process being used when playing Flac. Of course it is not 0% because it is rounded to the nearest percent. So it will use less than half a percent of the CPUs resources. So if Flac is < 1% it is not taxing the system at all. I've just done this on my office PC that has an AMD Phenom II X4 945 processor running at 3.0GHz and 8Gb of ram running at 1600MHz. (My Flac server has an Intel i7-3770S 3.1GHz processor with 16 Gb of ram running at 1866Mhz.) With a modern multi-core processor I would not expect a difference to be heard because the extra 'load' is likely done simultaneously.

I think of it like a car that cruises at 100 km per hour. Throw some bricks in the back and you will still travel at 100 km per hour. You will use a small amount of extra petrol for the trip but you wont notice anything different.

In recent experience I found that extra load makes a difference even on a high spec computer.
Cant explain it other than what my ears are telling me.
That said, I never did perscribe to the "its just 1s and 0's" camp though

Got curious, so I bought my work PC through to the lounge (Dual Xeon CPU, 32GB ram yada yada) and installed JRiver on it and set it up the same way I have my music server.
Heard the difference between switching Memory Play on and off, changing the buffering settings, anti virus&firewall on compared to off...

Task manager showed barely a blip, but ears said different.

I don't profess to have all the answers, just know that in my experience increased overhead on the system_DOES_make a difference.
Always a believer in experimenting and listening, and I found that it does makes a difference, even on a "high end" PC system.