[JeffeFawkes]

If you make your own buildroot image, you can get VERY quick boot times - here's a random vid I found [1] with 3.5 seconds on a pi zero w (which is considerably less powerful than a Pi3.

I've worked with similarly underpowered boards (licheepi zero, only has 64mb ram and uses the cpu from a dashcam!) and those will still boot and start an SDL app in under five seconds.

If you can identify the bare minimum that you need for your EQ solution, you can probably get similar boot times.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZehLyumyMvE

[kragen]

i feel like maybe 3.5 seconds is not VERY quick compared to 28 milliseconds?

[yjftsjthsd-h]

28ms is a VM; in hardware you can't get through firmware in 28ms. Apples to oranges.

[kragen]

true if your firmware is shitty enough but plenty of hardware platforms don't have that problem

[cinntaile]

The use case is different so the comparison doesn't really matter.

[kragen]

3.5 seconds might be tolerable for your car radio i guess

[srcreigh]

Yep. My head unit has its own startup time for digital audio inputs, around 2-3s.