[LAU] Success! An Asus EEE softsynth!

[Ken Restivo]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 03:15:54PM +0100, ben wrote:
> Ken Restivo a ?crit :
> > I'm happy to report that I am writing this from my new EEE softsynth, running an RT-patched kernel, jackd, and several softsynths.
> > 
> > System info, if anyone is interested, is here:
> > http://restivo.org/projects/eee
> 
> happy to know that. what EEE model is it?
> 
> I have an EEE also (700 family), without an RT kernel, but with rtprio
> capabilities set in limits.conf for jackd. The main issue to me is that,
> as i extensively use the audio INPUT, i get a lot of periodic audible
> overrrun with ALSA for INPUT audio with the in-board soundcard. This is
> not a cpu usage issue, though.
> 
> What surprised me was that using jackd over OSS layer did work for audio
> input, without audible overrun. I wonder why then, using the ALSA api
> does not work as well.
> 
> The only solution i have for ALSA currently is to use an external usb
> cheap interface.
> 
> So, i may compile an RT kernel to see if that fixes my issues.


This is an EEE 1000 (the dmiinfo.txt file on my site shows model/serial num). It has a 1.6Ghz 32-bit Atom processor. This seems more than up for the task of running the softsynths and DSP that I absolutely require.

My small ecasound daemon which has all my LADSPA plugings (CAPS amp, TAP autopanner, etc) for my Rhodes sucks up 50% CPU according to top. But everything plays. Even AMS works, no runs, glitches, or errors.

The crappy hda-intel card works fine. Video updates are noticeably slower, but I don't care; I use it mostly headless. I could also plug in my USB M-Audio FastTrack and use that too, but I haven't needed to yet.

For simple/cheap practice or casual gigs, this works. For the bigger gigs, or for recording/editing work I will probably continue to use my full-size, heavy/bulky, 64-bit Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz laptop.

But I may do a few optimizations on the EEE still: later JACK version, use the FastTrack, recompile kernel for 1000HZ timer, etc.

Let me know what kind of CPU usage reports you-all'd like, and what tools you recommend for calculating/determining usage.

-ken