[linux-audio-user] Low latency kernel on Mandrake

[Daniel James]

> Also, if you are using KDE,
> Mandrake has this stupid idea of renicing X to -10, which makes the
> mm kernel very stop-and-go.  Adjust the -n level to 0 in
> /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers.  If you're using gdm (as all sane people
> do), you don't have to worry, X is not reniced by gdm.

Thanks Austin! This tip has solved a long-running Audacity 'bug' for 
me, which I couldn't figure out. I wasn't seeing it on my 
gdm/blackbox studio machine, but my kdm/kde/blackbox office machine 
was always affected, no matter which IRQ the soundcard was on or how 
many different builds of Audacity I tried. Both were running 
otherwise similar Mandrake 9.1 installations.

For the record, with n set to -10 I got consistent skip-forwards of 
the Audacity cursor during playback, whenever I moved the mouse. 
That's why I was thinking it was an IRQ problem, but it persisted 
even with optimised IRQs (10 for the soundcard, 11 for the network 
card, 12 for the mouse.) 

I was able to replicate this on two very different hardware machines 
running kdm, so other Mandrake 9.1/Audacity users must have been 
affected. I'll post the fix to the Audacity lists.

Cheers!

Daniel