[Consortium] Benefit of Compiz to audio work?

[Marc-Olivier Barre]

On Nov 14, 2007 11:38 AM, Daniel James <daniel at 64studio.com> wrote:
> Hi Cory,
>
> > Some have said that moving the drawing of windows off the the GFX card
> > would help the load on the CPU and thus keep xruns to a minimum.
>
> I'm sceptical about that, because drawing windows shouldn't be causing
> xruns if the system is set up properly. I believe JACK Meterbridge uses
> libsdl for drawing the meter needles efficiently, but I believe most
> free software audio apps don't do much in the way of graphics
> acceleration (yet).
>
> I can think of a number of drawbacks to using Compiz on audio machines
> though:
>
> 1. Reliance on proprietary drivers for systems that otherwise don't
> require them. OpenGL is unusable if you don't have hardware
> acceleration, and not everyone has a Matrox card.

Since a few weeks ago, ATI users live in a happier, more free world.

> 2. Requirement for energy-hungry 3D cards (some of these cards need more
> electricity than CPUs which are perfectly usable for audio work). Apart
> from any environmental or cost considerations, more energy = more waste
> heat = more cooling noise. Which is bad in the studio, of course.

Some GPUs have the equivalent of speedstep. fan-noise stays constant
here with windows stuff going on. Makes some noise only when playing
GPU hungry games.

> 3. Electrical waste mountain. There are millions of machines out there
> which are perfectly (re)usable as audio workstations, but make Compiz a
> *requirement* for using free software, and they'll have to go into landfill.

Agreed, making it a requirement is stupid... I _chose_ to do it
because I find it fun, and because it has no impact on my system.

Cheers,
__________________
Marc-Olivier Barre,
MarcO'Chapeau.