[LAU] ACPI, HW and Jack issues?

Jostein Chr. Andersen jostein at vait.se
Fri May 8 02:36:53 EDT 2009


Hi LAU,

Right now, I'm optimizing my system for audio work, and have experienced some 
problems.

First, this is my system: Kubuntu 9.04 with 2.6.28-3-rt (noacpi nosmp (the 
system freezes w/o nosmp, possible because of the nvidia x-driver)), jack 
1.9.2 running on an Athlon64 X2 6400+, 3.2 GHz with 8 GB RAM and a MSI K9N SLI 
Platinum MB. The Soundcard is a Delta 1010 from M-Audio. All in all, a decent 
Audio HW I believe.

Normally, my DSP load varies from 1 to 2% when the Jack server runs without 
other Jack enabled apps. ACPI is enabled on the MB and disabled as a kernel 
parameter; but so far, so good.

Lately, I have tried to assign IRQ 9 (occupied by ACPI) to my 1010 card wo. 
success (can't assign the PCI port to IRQ 9 in BIOS), it's always shared with 
sata_nv, sata_nv and ohci_hcd:usb2 (from cat /proc/interrupts). What I now 
tried is to just disable ACPI on the MB (from BIOS) in order to free IRQ9 and 
it's now the funny things starts: now, the DSP load is from 0.0004% (very 
rare, but typical down to aprox. 2%) and stays mostly up to around 38%!

I have done the usual work in /etc/security/limits.conf, and the indexing work 
in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf in order to lock the 1010 to hw:1. Jack 
priority is 70, frames 64, sample rate is 44100 and periods 2 (latency 2.9 - 
earlier, I could reduce to 0.7 ms when needed w/o x-runs).

So what's up here? Why can't i separate  the 1010 from the system? The 1010 is 
sharing the IRQ with the HDs, that's nothing I want. Why the insane DSP load 
when ACPI is off in BIOS?

The outputs of "cat /proc/interrupts" and "lspci" are at the end of this 
posting.

Thanks,
Jostein




------------------------------------------------

Here is my "cat /proc/interrupts"
cat /proc/interrupts           CPU0                            
  0:     876748    XT-PIC-XT        timer  
  1:          2    XT-PIC-XT        i8042  
  2:          0    XT-PIC-XT        cascade
  5:     257354    XT-PIC-XT        sata_nv
  7:          2    XT-PIC-XT               
  8:          1    XT-PIC-XT        rtc0   
  9:          0    XT-PIC-XT        acpi   
 10:     760257    XT-PIC-XT        sata_nv, sata_nv, ohci_hcd:usb2, ICE1712
 11:      56400    XT-PIC-XT        ehci_hcd:usb1, HDA Intel, nvidia        
 12:          4    XT-PIC-XT        i8042                                   
 14:       8314    XT-PIC-XT        pata_amd                                
 15:          0    XT-PIC-XT        pata_amd                                
2297:      85027   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0                                   
NMI:          0   Non-maskable interrupts                                   
LOC:          0   Local timer interrupts                                    
RES:          0   Rescheduling interrupts                                   
CAL:          0   Function call interrupts
TLB:          0   TLB shootdowns
SPU:          0   Spurious interrupts
ERR:          2

lspci:

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SMBus (rev a3)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP55 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:04.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 IDE (rev a1)
00:05.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:05.1 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:05.2 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP55 SATA Controller (rev a3)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI bridge (rev a2)
00:06.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:08.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 Ethernet (rev a3)
00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:0f.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP55 PCI Express bridge (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM 
Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies Inc. ICE1712 [Envy24] 
PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller (rev 02)
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400 GS (rev a1)








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