[linux-audio-user] Re: [Ardour-users] Re: [Alsa-devel] usb audio sound quality

[Patrick Shirkey]

After testing for the past 12 hours ;)

I have some deductions that I thought some people may find useful.

It seems that at least with

nvidia geforce2 cards
PIV 1.5Ghz
392 MB RAM
USB Quattro

kernel 2.4.19
Andrew morton lowlat patch

Running different WMs makes little difference to the sound quality. I 
have tested from no xsession where the sound quality is crystal clear 
(even while switching consoles) to enlightenment 0.16 to fluxbox 0.1.12.

The thing that appears to be causing the most problems is the amount of 
   virtual desktops that are being run combined with apps like Mozilla. 
If I run jack like so

jackd -v -R -a -d alsa -d quattro1 -r 44100 -H

and start an alsaplayer with the text interface things are fine. It 
seems that the more guis I have taking memory space the more degraded 
the sound quality is. I have looked into changing my irqs but they are 
set at 9 for the agp and 11 for the USB controller.

So I would like to say that even though people have found that Fluxbox 
gives them better results than Gnome or KDE. I think it is more likely 
that having an absence of such memory demanding apps like Gnome or KDE 
desktop are the real reasons that the performance is better. FWIW I 
experienced better sound quality while running enlightenment than with 
Fluxbox. I also found Fluxbox to be a little lacking in terms of the 
usability I require. For example I like to have guis that span multiple 
screens. I couldn't see a way to do this in Fluxbox.

So my take on the WM problem is that as long as it is not an extremely 
memory intensive app it should do things correctly. The more 
configurability it has for turning off things like refresh rates and if 
it allows you to do the things you need should be the requirements.

It would be nice if there was one WM that way out performed but I don't 
think that it is possible given the amount of competition.




-- 
Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd.
For the discerning hardware connoisseur
Http://www.boosthardware.com
Http://www.djcj.org - The Linux Audio Users guide
========================================

Being on stage with the band in front of crowds shouting, "Get off! No! 
We want normal music!", I think that was more like acting than anything 
I've ever done.

Goldie, 8 Nov, 2002
The Scotsman