Also I was wondering whether reading each sample at a
time from a file
is likely to be dropping the real-time ness, or whether people have
found that this isn't really such a limiting factor.
this may not be the only source of your problems, but its definitely a
huge problem for a low latency design. you *cannot* do disk i/o from
the same thread that does audio i/o if you want low latency. no ifs,
ands or buts.
--p