I listen to a lot of online radio.
Running Kubuntu (22 LTS) with a Ryzen 5600G.
Got about 10 docker containers running, CPU at 1.5%.
I got to my favourite radio’s website and play the live stream, CPU jumps to 28%!!!
Couldn’t believe my eyes.
Stopped the stream and tried to play with cvlc from cli: same results.
BTW the process taking all the CPU is plasmashell.
Even tried running in a Virtualbox VM, both from browser and from cli: same thing.
If I switch off the audio for the VM, CPU goes back down to 2% (stream still playing in VM but obviously no audio).
Installed Xcfe on my system, typing from there now, stream playing from cli, CPU: 3%.
Tried in Xcfe both in VLC and browser with same results, CPU wavered around 3%.
And BTW in Plasma of course CPU temp shot up and was hovering around 45C.
Now in xfce: 33C stream still playing.
Also I did not reboot, just logged off from plasma and loged on xfce.
So all the plasma stuff is still running (quite a few plasma-monitor processes).
Not by any means an expert, but seems to me something is seriously not right there.