[LAU] benchmarking your audio system

[Renato]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 20:43:59 -1000
david <gnome at hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

> Joan Quintana wrote:
> > I had the idea in mind to test my machine (and trying to benchmark
> > the tests), loading the session with a chain of JACK clients, in
> > order to know the limits of my system and in what conditions the
> > system is stressed, and when I would have more chances of XRUNS.
> > 
> > The chain would be something like this.
> > 
> > *playing a midi file with Rosegarden (a midifile full of tracks)
> > *fluidsynth as a soft synth, loading a heavy soundfont.
> > *JACK RACK for LADSPA effects (load several processor consuming
> > effects) *recording the session into Ardour, at the same time that
> > monitoring the output to the speakers
> > 
> > Meanwhile I will monitor the system performance (processor & RAM).
> > (I thing that Conky System Monitor would do the task of saving a
> > log file for later parsing). I don't know if it is possible to
> > fetch the number of XRuns from a file or log.
> > 
> > Questions:
> > -how can I stress even more this test?
> 
> While it's doing all that, fire up some complex synthesizer patches
> in Pure Data or csound or AmSynth or AMS or Zyn or some other
> synthesizer that does a lot of processing to generate its sound.
> Synthesizer patches that generate their own changing sounds would be
> great. Alsa Modular Synthesizer has a living_phaser patch and
> probably other patches that do that.
> 
> Or you could download and install the trial version of the Bibble
> photo processing program <http://www.bibblelabs.com/>. It is one of
> the most processor and memory intensive programs I've ever
> encountered. Install it, do some basic processing of an entire
> directory of large images, then have it batch process the images ...
> 
> Another thought: add a Windows audio app running under WINE or on a 
> virtual machine running Windows.
> 
> Oh, and install XFractint and have it do a deep zoom somewhere into
> the Mandelbrot set.
> 
> Then do your email and browse the web while keeping notes in
> OpenOffice all at the same time.
> 
> I think that might be enough to stress-test a modern PC.
> 
> > -is it possible to make this process standard, searching for a
> > general method trying to say if this machine, this configuration or
> > this OS is better than other? -is there something left that I need
> > to take into account? -is all that a good idea?
> 
> Well, I'd rather spend my time writing something, drawing pictures, 
> working on photos, or making music - but whatever floats your
> boat! ;-)
> 

I'm a total noob on this, but will all these tests actually tell you
something about how your system will work for audio? aren't they too
generic?

renato