RE: [linux-audio-user] new computer woes

Anthony, Hi. I think there haven't been that many dual-processor users yet. Paul and Jesse are, and probably a few more. We need more trailblazers, I guess! ;-) First, the IRQ stuff on the Audio Quality HOWTO really does not apply at all the dual processor. I'm willing to try and help in that area, but it will be at an arms length since I don't have a dual processor machine. I did collect a bit of info on SMP IRQs, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me yet. Maybe we can make some sense of it together. Post back some info about the machine and IRQs. There will of course be all sorts of questions about what disk drives, what speeds, etc. as well as what drive format. We'll just have to dig in. There was a post a few months ago, on the Jack or Ardour lists I think, about someone having some distortion and xruns, and then solving the problem by compiling the graphics adapter driver himself. I think that was an nVidia item, but I don't remember. Check back in September I think. Sorry I don't have any great answers. Just ideas. Cheers, Mark -----Original Message----- From: linux-audio-user-admin(a)music.columbia.edu [mailto:linux-audio-user-admin@music.columbia.edu]On Behalf Of Anthony Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 2:15 AM To: linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu Subject: [linux-audio-user] new computer woes Thought I'd post to see if anyone has any advice. I've just built a new SMP machine: Asus A7M266-D, 1.0 Ghz Athlons * 2. I got some nice fans from endpcnoise.com (Molex) that are virtually silent and a Power Supply which is louder than what I'd hope but very reasonable for 400W's I suppose (dunno). I installed gentoo, latest alsa, etc... Unfortunately playback is distorted during video load. It is *not* a CPU load issue - I can playback just fine while compiling the kernel with make -j3. If I scroll pages up and down in galeon the sounds slows down :o. Jack doesn't report Xruns but sometimes delays when I do this. This occurs both with the onboard C-media chip and my Delta 44. I struggled for a long time to get the IRQ's not to share. I tried all the suggestions in the Audio Quality HOWTO. The video card is a PCI GForce 2. It was in my old machine and didn't cause any problems (while my old onboard AGP did create some noise). The only thing I can find is the PCI Latency settings are all set to 32. This seems odd I suppose, so I tried higher settings for the video to give it more bandwith and other variations with no success. I might go out and buy an inexpensive AGP card tomorrow, but I'd hate to find out the problem is deeper than that. Kernel is 2.4.20 vanilla tried with and without lowlat. Maybe I should back down to 2.4.19? Any suggestions? TIA --ant