[linux-audio-user] latency issues

[dwillis at stx.rr.com]

two years ago i did a bunch of testing on latency to find the best kernel
and patches for my system, and got some damn good results with several
kernels (the best being 2.4.12-ac3-pe (alan cox's patch and pre-emptive
kernel patch using alsa on suse 7.3 with gcc 2.96 20000731).  i now have a
new computer with gentoo linux and alsa 0.9.6, and can only get 16 ms
latency with perfect results.  same soundcard - m-audio audiophile 2496
(ice1712).  i've used kernel 2.4.20 with pe, ll, and some other options,
compiling with gcc version 3.2.3 20030422, and i get the same result with
all of them (as well as without pe or ll).

does anyone know what the problem could be?  alsa version? gcc version? 
kernel version? hardware (eth0 and soundcard share irq - never thought to 
test without eth0 loaded)?  i'd like to get latency under 4 ms.

thanks for your input,
dave