[LAU] optimal disk performance, ubuntu

Atte André Jensen atte.jensen at gmail.com
Thu Nov 20 03:01:24 EST 2008


Lee Revell wrote:

> What format are the tracks in?  16 bit, 44.1Khz is 0.7MB/sec per track
> which any drive
> should be able to handle 10 tracks of.  But with 96Khz and 24 or 32
> bit samples, you
> could be pushing the limits of the drive.

It's 16 bits, 44khz

> What does running hdparm -Tt on the block device (/dev/sdX) give you?

atte at vestbjerg:~$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
  Timing cached reads:   1862 MB in  2.00 seconds = 931.56 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  142 MB in  3.00 seconds =  47.29 MB/sec

How does that sound?

> Realtime tuning should not matter because with any sanely written DAW the disk
> IO will be done in it's own non-RT thread.

Ok

I experimented further, and it's not only the number of audio tracks 
that seems to be the problem. Other cpu intensive stuff like soft synths 
and fx bring the cup usage up. But I still feel that many audio tracks 
take more cpu than they're supposed to.

-- 
Atte

http://atte.dk    http://modlys.dk



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