[linux-audio-user] The sound dropout problem

Recently, after having tried every fix I could find on the net for fixing the dropped samples that I get out of my Delta44, it hit me to simply try 'nice'. I got a profound increase in sound reliability by preceding my play command with 'nice -n-20'. I was finally able to get a couple of dropouts this way, by simultaneously executing a recursive long directory listing from the root (in other words thrashing the hard drive), but I found that using nice, I am at least to the point now that I can operate under normal conditions with reasonable assurance that I am not going to ruin a recording with drop outs. This raises some questions. If negative 'nice' greatly relieves my sound stablility problems, then what does this say about the origin of the problem. Does it determine which of the many causes (irq order, pci latency, kernel preemption, disk throughput, etc..) should be focused on to further alleviate the trouble? Also, are there any suggestions as to how to conveniently make sure that all processes that use the sound driver run at the higher priority? If 'nice' is to be used, what is the best way... Shall I run them as root using nice, or is there another way to automatically cause them to be -nice, perhaps even when run by normal users? Thanks, Tobiah