[linux-audio-user] getting my priorities straight

[Atte André Jensen]

Hi

Sorry for cross posting, but I figured the solution to my problem could 
be with both csound and my linux/kernel setup, so here goes:

When running csound5 under X I get "WARNING: Buffer underrun in 
real-time audio output" from csound accompanied by a click, whenever I 
"do something", including tab'ing from xterm to xterm. Looking at top I 
figure a solution would be to have csound run with lower nice value or 
higher priority. Is that a viable solution?

If so, where do I change these settings and which should I change and to 
what?

I have this in my .csoundrc:
-+rtaudio=alsa
-o devaudio:hw:1
--sched
--expression-opt
-b 64
-B 256
-d
-m 7
-M 0

I have a patched 2.6.15.6-rt21 kernel and run debian/stable on a pentium 
4, 2.4GHz laptop with a edirol UA1A usb soundcard. I didn't "do 
anything" with my IRQ's since I don't know how to or if it's nessecary...

Here's a snapshot of the beginning of top:

Tasks:  91 total,   2 running,  89 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 44.9% us, 31.6% sy,  0.0% ni, 23.6% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    514848k total,   365216k used,   149632k free,    24720k buffers
Swap:  1004052k total,        0k used,  1004052k free,   208536k cached

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND 

  5704 atte      15   0 34968  32m 1872 S 48.9  6.4   0:34.13 csound 

  1617 root     -43  -5     0    0    0 S 25.3  0.0   0:02.91 IRQ 10 

   777 root     -49  -5     0    0    0 S  1.3  0.0   0:02.17 IRQ 8 

     2 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:00.36 
softirq-high/0
  1797 root     -42  -5     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:16.23 IRQ 5 

  3177 root      15   0 99568  31m 2932 S  0.3  6.2   3:11.25 XFree86 

     1 root      16   0  1584  516  452 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.15 init 

     3 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 
softirq-timer/0
     4 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 
softirq-net-tx/
     5 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.90 
softirq-net-rx/
     6 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 
softirq-scsi/0
     7 root      -2   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:06.63 
softirq-tasklet
     8 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 desched/0 

     9 root      -2  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.29 events/0 

    10 root      14  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper 

    11 root      11  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread 

    13 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 kblockd/0 


-- 
peace, love & harmony
Atte

http://www.atte.dk      | quartet:      http://www.anagrammer.dk
http://www.atte.dk/gps  | compositions: http://www.atte.dk/compositions