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<blockquote cite="mid:4B2354C4.7080802@hawaii.rr.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Just wondering. Without an RT kernel here, my 2 laptops seem to run my
simple audio needs pretty well at 64msec latency. At least, it's never
bothered my playing along with computer-generated audio.
I don't do any heavy-duty audio work here. Once I tried Jackrack, put
one effect in it (that worked) or one amplifer (that worked) but trying
to use both didn't. But I don't know if that had so much to do with
latency or lack of RT kernel as with a smallish amount of memory and an
underpowered processor driving the whole thing. Now that I''ve upgraded
the memory on both laptops, perhaps it would work? On musicbox, with
512MB, using a single good quality (larger) soundfont was enough to
cause problems. With 768MB in it, it works without problems.
I see people on the list running much lower latencies than 64msec, and
seemingly trying to get even lower ...
So, just wondering.
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</blockquote>
Depends entirely on specifically what you're trying to do. I'm using
my setup as a live-gig MIDI module, in the sense that when I play a
note on my keyboard, it sends noteon/noteoff via MIDI to the box, which
either (a) puts out that note as close to zero-latency as possible or
(b) delays everything, which hurts live cohesion in many ways, not the
least being my fellow band-members taking cues from the positions my
fingers are in. <br>
<br>
It's true that RAM and CPU are both needed if you're going to use your
laptop for effects. A good sound system can ease the CPU needs some,
but not much in the effects zone. Apart from MIDI event processing,
soundfonts are actually perhaps the least resource-intensive
music-generation task in my current experience, as long as your sound
system is reasonably tweaked, except some <u>simple</u> sound
synthesis tasks in well-written code, e.g., some organ-only
simulators. Sophisticated sound synthesis will eat your CPU alive
(that's why I bought this AMD X4), as will anything but the simplest
effects setup.<br>
<br>
Which brings me to a 'hmmm'. CPU. GPU? :-) Not yet, but we can pray
for it :-)<br>
<br>
J.E.B.<br>
<br>
<br>
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