Quote Originally Posted by Andrei View Post
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'm currently listening to files encoded to flac and being live transcoded to mp3 and streamed over the internet (on a domestic ADSL line - upload is slower than down) on a £25 Raspberry Pi (700mHz ARM 512meg Ram) No glitches, no drop outs, yeah it runs the cpu up a bit on the pi but not enough to cause it to break sweat. Andrei has his bricks in the back of an artic lorry, mine are on a motorbike! They'll all get there at the same time and be the same bricks!