[linux-audio-user] xruns vs. disk activity

[rob fell]

Hi Alex

> i see that both your mouse (?!) and your network card seem to have
> higher priority than your IDE channels (harddisks).
> i would advice you to try without the network card and not to move
> your mouse  =)

believe it or not i did try an "ifconfig eth0 down" to see if it would improve 
the situation! (i did say i was getting desperate).

> and what Mark Knecht said about period size for the SB soundcards is
> also slightly touched here:  http://www.djcj.org/LAU/jack/
> your 128 setting might be too small. did you try with 256 or 512?

looks like no-one is using anything as cruddy as a SB128 PCI anymore (and with 
good reason).

when Mark suggested that the card might not be man-enough for the job i 
realised that my internal model of how a soundcard works might be a little 
naive - i suspect it has more than a lump of DP ram and some counters :)

i set the buffersize smaller to try to act as a crude filter to make my awk 
script simpler - though this neglects the effect on the card itself of 
running at a higher rate.

the most success so far with the testing seems to be at 1024 - though large 
file copies causes massive xruns at any rate (BTW: how large would a 'large' 
file be?).

i can't decide whether to gamble on the purchase of a decent card and hope 
this all goes away, or whether to read the alsa driver code for the card to 
see if i can work out just how bad the card really is :(

>
> and ofcourse... good luck.

looks like i may need it - and some more spare time. thanks.

R