Running parole to play audio files was aware of rather high cpu usage. Running other music players gets much lower CPU usage figures While not very scientific in the least - some readings from TOP 2258 hob 20 0 1662492 52548 21496 S 14.6 1.3 1:57.00 parole 4243 hob 20 0 2055920 167312 60224 S 6.0 4.2 3:19.04 clementine 21141 hob 20 0 1525372 105288 21912 S 2.7 2.6 0:02.18 gmusicbrow+ 19360 hob 20 0 1538900 75136 41744 S 3.0 1.9 0:03.86 totem
set top to update at 1.0s intervals, watched top for 30 seconds while playing an audio file the cpu usage never fell below ~15% while playing a video file the cpu usage never rose above ~7%
Very strange, I can't reproduce this. I tested Parole, gmusicbrowser and totem now and all three display practically the same amount CPU usage when playing back audio-only. (Also removed a few of our custom drawing callbacks, but couldn't observe any change in CPU consumption.)
Would appear that this was localised - forced into a re-install, parole now shows a more sensible CPU usage with audio files.
Ok, feel free to re-open the bugreport if this problem resurfaces in a reproducible manner.