I was seeing one of the CPU’s getting hammered on the server side and discovered that the normal mp3 encoders I was using was pegging the CPU to 100 percent.
This is why its good to have a test system, I was thinking it was network or driver related and took a few network services I’m not yet using away from my backup sever and that did nothing. I was about to get more intrusive and switch which NIC the music streamed out and look into drivers but decided to look around the web and Spacial Audio forums for clues.
I didn’t get my exact answer but saw a mention about mp3 lame encoders. So I started up my streams on the test server and turned them off one by one and presto the mp3 encoders were the issue. I configured some mp3 LAME encoders and CPU usage went way down!
I guess the Windows codecs used by the mp3 encoders for my normal mp3 streams was the issue.
Made the same change on the production music server and CPU usage is now down to acceptable levels on the server side!
Watched a movie and then couldn’t get back to sleep so came in to test my theories, now time to get a little sleep!