[linux-audio-user] light multitrack recording

[Kai Vehmanen]

On Fri, 27 May 2005, Peter Lutek wrote:

> i'm wondering what you all would recommend as the least resource-consuming 
> (in terms of cpu/memory usage) method for multitrack recording. i need to 
> record 18 channels (each to its own file) of 44.1kHz float audio in a live 
> setting, while simultaneously running some looping and FX, so i'd like to 
> keep the recording chain as lean as possible.
[...]
> curiously, my tests have shown significantly lower average system load using 
> ardour than using ecasound. i was surprised by this, having assumed that

I wouldn't be suprised if ardour performed better in your case. Especially 
handling lots of separate files (for example 1ch-per-file) can be a 
challenge to ecasound's engine...

But the difference shouldn't be significant, so I'd still be interested in 
the exact ecasound configuration you've used in your tests (in private 
mail perhaps?) -- maybe it's a known performance bottleneck.

Anyways, the basic operations a multitrack hd-recording app needs to do 
are the same for a console app as well as for a full-blown DAW: audio i/o 
-> ardour and ecasound both use jackd; separate disk i/o thread with lots 
of buffering; processing and float<->fixed conversions; etc -- some of 
these are by their nature quite heavy operations cpu+mem wise, so if some 
app provided significantly lower cpu+mem usage than for example ardour or 
ecasound, I'd suspect it is skipping some important steps. ;)

-- 
  http://www.eca.cx
  Audio software for Linux!