I think I've got it :-) Muchas gracias to Joakim Hernberg, who posted
the jack2 profiling document. I read it about five times, trying to
ponder what my first step might be given that info. It discusses two
major modes of jack2: the default, which is asynchronous, and another,
which is synchronous. Under asynch, my stress-test yields zero xruns
(or close) at 5.3 ms (as reported in Qjackctl); but under synch, my last
two tests say kosher at 0.667 ms *grin* Shocking. That synch makes a
whole lot of difference. I can just imagine jack2 jockeying all four
CPUs to make that happen :-) I'll be doing a lot more stress-testing to
prove it, but for right now, frames/period are 64, sample rate 192000,
two periods/buffer :-) :-) I praise the Lord, and I thank everyone for
the help!
J.E.B.