[linux-audio-user] getting my priorities straight

Hi Sorry for cross posting, but I figured the solution to my problem could be with both csound and my linux/kernel setup, so here goes: When running csound5 under X I get "WARNING: Buffer underrun in real-time audio output" from csound accompanied by a click, whenever I "do something", including tab'ing from xterm to xterm. Looking at top I figure a solution would be to have csound run with lower nice value or higher priority. Is that a viable solution? If so, where do I change these settings and which should I change and to what? I have this in my .csoundrc: -+rtaudio=alsa -o devaudio:hw:1 --sched --expression-opt -b 64 -B 256 -d -m 7 -M 0 I have a patched 2.6.15.6-rt21 kernel and run debian/stable on a pentium 4, 2.4GHz laptop with a edirol UA1A usb soundcard. I didn't "do anything" with my IRQ's since I don't know how to or if it's nessecary... Here's a snapshot of the beginning of top: Tasks: 91 total, 2 running, 89 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 44.9% us, 31.6% sy, 0.0% ni, 23.6% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 514848k total, 365216k used, 149632k free, 24720k buffers Swap: 1004052k total, 0k used, 1004052k free, 208536k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 5704 atte 15 0 34968 32m 1872 S 48.9 6.4 0:34.13 csound 1617 root -43 -5 0 0 0 S 25.3 0.0 0:02.91 IRQ 10 777 root -49 -5 0 0 0 S 1.3 0.0 0:02.17 IRQ 8 2 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:00.36 softirq-high/0 1797 root -42 -5 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:16.23 IRQ 5 3177 root 15 0 99568 31m 2932 S 0.3 6.2 3:11.25 XFree86 1 root 16 0 1584 516 452 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.15 init 3 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 softirq-timer/0 4 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-net-tx/ 5 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.90 softirq-net-rx/ 6 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 softirq-scsi/0 7 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:06.63 softirq-tasklet 8 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 desched/0 9 root -2 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.29 events/0 10 root 14 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper 11 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread 13 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/0 -- peace, love & harmony Atte http://www.atte.dk | quartet: http://www.anagrammer.dk http://www.atte.dk/gps | compositions: http://www.atte.dk/compositions