Quote Originally Posted by SourceChild View Post
I am curious at your feedback. I've got three different venues that have been playing Audio off their Catalyst machines for years. Easily over 5000 separate instances of playback with audio and I've never heard of problems. (Granted I had a few bugs with V3.3 and older on the old G5 machines.)

Now I have done things in different cases. Sometimes it was literally the 1/8" mini phone jack connected to a stereo DI. Other times an external USB or Firewire Audio device. Most times using SDI audio.

Where have you seen problems occur most.
a more general point-
multitasking general purpose computer systems do not prioritise the allocation of any specific system resources to a single task.

a standalone audio playback unit - because it will be designed with only one function - and system resources prioritised to that single function - will likely be more stable. though not always.

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In the design of general computer systems - it does not matter if a program crashes - or the OS goes and does something else for a few seconds-
In audio visual applications running on general purpose computers - ths behaviour is not appropriate - and there is no means of controlling these things in the operating system.

We have been lucky that it mostly works - almost all the time. and testing on shows over many years has shown adequate performance under long and continuous use. but this is still not exactly how these things are designed.