23 Oct
2010
23 Oct
'10
4:02 p.m.
On Fri, 22 Oct 2010 20:43:59 -1000
david <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
Joan Quintana wrote:
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
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! ;-)