Neill, I bet you are right about the external HD spinning down. I mean, yes, it could be any number of things as listed by Tim, but the external HD is the most likely cause.
So unfortunately you will need to find a different reason to buy a Pi 4 :-)
FWIW, I've just bought my first Pi (which is a 4 B 2GB) and it does feel like a bit of overkill for a dedicated moOde player. CPU and RAM utilization is extremely low. A few notes based on some other comments in the thread;
1) I've got mine in a Flirc passive case and it runs cool enough. I absolutely refuse to have an actively cooled device as my audio player.
I see it climb to 60'C or so sometimes, which is nothing if you consider that these chips are tested up to 120'C and don't even start throttling till around 80-85'C. See here.
2) I'm using a Khadas Tone Board 1 over USB and the audio quality is superb. The only time there is any "popping" is if I am dumb enough to reboot the Pi while my pre-amp and amp are powered up and the pre-amp is set to the DAC input. The easy solution is to switch the pre-amp to a different input while rebooting the Pi.
So unfortunately you will need to find a different reason to buy a Pi 4 :-)
FWIW, I've just bought my first Pi (which is a 4 B 2GB) and it does feel like a bit of overkill for a dedicated moOde player. CPU and RAM utilization is extremely low. A few notes based on some other comments in the thread;
1) I've got mine in a Flirc passive case and it runs cool enough. I absolutely refuse to have an actively cooled device as my audio player.
Code:
moode@moode:~ $ ./my-pi-temp.sh
Wed Dec 20 07:51:26 MST 2023 @ moode
-------------------------------------------
GPU temp => temp=45.7'C
CPU temp => 45'C
Core => volt=0.8600VI see it climb to 60'C or so sometimes, which is nothing if you consider that these chips are tested up to 120'C and don't even start throttling till around 80-85'C. See here.
2) I'm using a Khadas Tone Board 1 over USB and the audio quality is superb. The only time there is any "popping" is if I am dumb enough to reboot the Pi while my pre-amp and amp are powered up and the pre-amp is set to the DAC input. The easy solution is to switch the pre-amp to a different input while rebooting the Pi.
