Some tests on inexpensive hardware

I've been playing around with Pianoteq running on a TV box with Armbian (specifically a Qplus with an Allwinner H6 chipset at 1750MHz) and I believe it performs decently for the price. It reaches a performance index of 17 and the internal frequency has to be reduced to 22.050Hz as recommended for this type of low-end hardware. Since I wanted to run it headless and connect it to a Casio CDP-S100 in a loop (USB out-Qplus-aux in) I used also an inexpensive USB audio interface with volume incorporated (the CDP-S100 can't control de volume of the aux-in). I tried the Behringer UCA222, but I got terrible digital interferences, other cheap audio interfaces had similar problems. Surprisingly, the TechRise USB Soundcard performed quite well without noticeable digital interferences, and its volume knob works adequately. The Qplus does not have a power button, so it has to be unplugged to turn it off. Pianoteq software does not seem to like this and next time it runs with GUI it shows a message indicating that the application was closed abnormally. This message requires interaction to continue, so it is not approrpriate for a device that runs headless. The solution is to start Pianoteq with the --headless command line, which apparently makes Pianoteq not to bother how it is closed, besides not showing a GUI. In my case audio using ALSA direct interface worked much better than Jack.

I also got a second-hand MinisForum n40 mini PC (with an Celeron n4020 and Intel SST audio) running Windows 10 and the new version of Asio4All works really well with the integrated audio interface. I got a performance index of 45. I also configured the power button to hibernate so that the pc turns on and off really fast.