[LAU] audio configuration for ulatencyd

Hi, I'm the developer of ulatencyd[1], a dynamic system optimizer for the linux kernel. I want to write a configuration that suits hifi audio usage better then the default configuration. The default optimizes for normal workloads, restrains amok running processes, gives priority to the active running program, the window manager and desktop ui. One problem I was facing is realtime tasks. Currently only two programs are allowed to get rt priority, thats jackd and pulseaudio. I don't know of any other that a normal user may use. The default configuration looks like this: https://github.com/poelzi/ulatencyd/blob/master/rules/scheduler_desktop.lua jackd and pulseaudio go into users bg_high group which has 1/3 of the users cpu share time and max 45% cpu realtime, which should be enough for normal workload. Normal processes, that are not caught specially are grouped into groups, using the pgrp process value. ( to workaround bad ui behaviour like kde & gnome this value can be overridden by rules. Usually all programs started get a group and all children of them end in the same group.) I guess you guys need something different. • do you a lot of rt tasks besides pulseaudio and jackd ? • do they need a lot of cpu time ? is 45% not enough for jackd/pulseaudio ? • would it be better to just put everything into one cgroup instead of many smaller groups ? maybe just make exceptions for ui apps and the rest into one group ? There are other neat things that could be done: • move all away from one processor and move jackd for example on it, giving him lowest latency possible. ok, not perfect as the kernel may still use this cpu. But interrupts can also be masked on the core. • maybe changing /proc/sys/kernel/sched_latency_ns will help As you can see, there is a lot that can be done. As I'm not doing audio, I really would like to get some requirements from users first, or even better. Someone with insights is writing the configuration/rules. I will be glad to assist :-) kind regards daniel [1] https://github.com/poelzi/ulatencyd