Open theOtterWizard opened 3 years ago
If you're buying a Pi, that's easy. Buy a Pi4. No one should buy a new Pi3, period. Pi4 has significantly higher performance, has more RAM, and is about the same price. Right now at Vilros.com a 1GB Pi3 board is $35, and a 2GB Pi4 is also $35, so this is a no-brainer. 2GB is plenty for Jambox, the only reason to buy 4GB is if you want the flexibility to use the Pi4 for other applications that might need it.
If you only look at the clock speed, you might think the difference between Pi4 and Pi3 is tiny, but it's not. The difference is more than just clock speed: https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks
How does this show up in real world use in Jambox? Pi4 can get (slighly) lower delay while maintaining audio integrity.
Pi4 can run rock-solid with jack audio PERIOD=64, which allows Jamulus to "enable small network buffers", which will give lowest delay. Pi3 gets some "xruns" (audio frames that aren't ready when needed) with PERIOD=64, so Jambox 1.3 defaults to PERIOD=128 (with NPERIODS half of Pi4 setting) for Pi3. You can change this in /etc/jackdrc.conf if you want to try the Pi4 settings.
If you already own a Pi3, use it. Jambox runs fine on a Pi3, and the difference isn't big enough to justify replacing it. Just don't buy a new one.
A few other differences which favor the Pi4:
There's a few scenario's I'm specifically curious about:
Any advice would be much appreciated!