Hi Louigi, On 12/05/2014 09:43, Louigi Verona wrote: [...] [...] *Problem 1. Xruns.* You said you already check "standard stuff".. Did this include turning CPU Scaling off and setting _all cores_ to "performance"? In my experience this always makes a very big difference in quantity of xruns regardless of the sound card. Xubuntu doesn't have anything out of the box for that so you'll either have to use cpufrequtils or if intrested I've made a simple python-gtk front-end which sits in the tray for managing the task if you're interested... Also switching off (internal) wifi improves the situation here. I get the same problem with using the zoom H4 as a USB device and up to now found no solution. I recently got a zoom R8 and with that the issue doesn't seem to be present (although I haven't tested it much as USB device...) so I assume it *might* be a device problem. So.. good luck and do share relevant results, as I think some general 'laptop' info might be interesting regardless of brands. Lorenzo. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user

Harry, "And hyperthreading (usually a bios setting)?" Will try to turn it off.

"Personal experience with an Acer tm 5720, even setting to powersave governed makes xruns / fallouts go away." are you suggesting that at powersave mode things are actually better? Why? I just tried doing this, xruns continue to be generated.

Lorenzo, "Did this include turning CPU Scaling off and setting _all cores_ to "performance"?" Yep. "Also switching off (internal) wifi improves the situation here." How do you switch it off?

Jeremy! http://paste.ubuntu.com/7451424/ However, the output of sudo lsusb -v is way too long, so I cannot get it from the terminal, I will save it to a file and paste with the next message. On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Jeremy Jongepier <jeremy(a)autostatic.com>wrote;wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

On 05/12/2014 11:14 AM, Louigi Verona wrote: Thanks again :) root 5232 5232 50 - [irq/45-snd_hda_] Try this in /etc/default/rtirq: # IRQ thread service names # (space separated list, from higher to lower priority). RTIRQ_NAME_LIST="45 usb" # Highest priority. RTIRQ_PRIO_HIGH=95 So replace 'snd' with '45' and '90' with '95' Your onboard soundcard doesn't get a high rtprio, maybe by indicating its IRQ it gets rtprio 95 instead of the current value of 50. You do this with: sudo service rtirq reset edit /etc/default/rtirq sudo service rtirq start Then you should see a message about IRQ 45 getting rtprio 90. Not sure if this would make a difference but it's worth a try. Jeremy _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user

On 05/12/2014 11:32 AM, Louigi Verona wrote: Ah, you edited the file before running the commands, that's ok too. With 'edit /etc/default/rtirq' I actually meant edit the file /etc/default/rtirq with your editor of choice. But I see the right values get picked up now so could you check if this improves things? Jeremy _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user

"Also switching off (internal) wifi improves the situation here." How do you switch it off?

Nope, I had to install 3.8 as opposed to 3.2 which comes with Ubuntu. Looks like when you are buying a new laptop what you should do is put on the latest system available and I typically try to stick with LTS.

Interestingly enough, I very rarely go lower 512 frames, which is around 46ms. And for some reason, midi is always precise even on 1024. I did test this and I remember I did work on a system where it made a difference, but not now.

"Curious as to why you picked xubuntu over ubuntustudio." I never used Ubuntustudio and in general I prefer the usual distro + putting audio stuff on top myself. I don't like audio distros for some reason, I guess they are too "designed" for me. As for why I chose Xubuntu - I did not like Unity at all, even after several times of trying. On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:08 AM, Len Ovens wrote: On Mon, 12 May 2014, Louigi Verona wrote: Nope, I had to install 3.8 as opposed to 3.2 which comes with Ubuntu. Looks like when you are buying a new laptop what you should do is put on the latest system available and I typically try to stick with LTS. LTS is 14.04 with a 3.11 kernel, 12.04 should be good for another year anyway. There are two 3.8 kernels though, there is the generic as well as the lowlatency. The low latency kernel seems to get less xruns in anything I have thrown at it. There were a few 3.8 kernels that had USB audio problems, but I am pretty sure the fix got put in so you should have it. (dmesg would show if there is a problem) Interestingly enough, I very rarely go lower 512 frames, which is around 46ms. And for some reason, midi is always precise even on 1024. I did test this and I remember I did work on a system where it made a difference, but not now. I should have been clear, I have been quoting qjackctl's version of latency, so at 48k 512 would be 21ms... probably that is a calculated one way trip through jackd and of course doesn't include card delay. Certainly it should be high enough that CPU governing doesn't matter too much. I try to test before I buy if I can. Boot what you want to run from a memory stick. Ubuntustudio's (if ubuntu is your thing) ISO probably has the SW or enough of it preinstalled to make testing possible running it live. Other audio distros have live ISOs as well. I try to do the same thing with audio IFs. I walk in with my netbook and make sure it works with linux... and how well it works... can I see all the channels? can I hear them? (semi)pro audio is kind of hit and miss right now. Curious as to why you picked xubuntu over ubuntustudio. Ubuntustudio is based on xubuntu, but has audio set up out of the box and with 14.04LTS allows selection at install time of which SW not to install that is on the live ISO. Though, to be honest, I don't know what happens to packages those applications depend on if you don't install them. For example KDEnlive would have the kde libs on the ISO. If the KDE apps are not selected, do the kde libs still get installed? I'll have to ask. ubiquity does do some sort of clean up at the end of the install.

On 2014-05-12 09:14, Len Ovens wrote: i'd like to do that; on debian, how do i make the userspace governor available? i can load the kernel module (and it shows in lsmod), but userspace doesn't show in the list of avilable governors which is returned by cpufreq-info.

i'll have to watch this, to see if i can figure out why, sometimes, all the governors disappear except powersave and performance.

ok... looks like my non-rt kernel gives me a larger list of available governors (and, curiously, a lower maximum available CPU speed) than my rt kernel, which has only the powersave and performance governors as well as a higher max CPU speed. perhaps "performance" on the RT kernel will be best....

Hey Paul! Yes, thanks for advice. I was now able to make a track with 0 xruns for an hour simply by disabling wifi from nm-applet GUI. This is great, as I typically have wired Internet often available, but not in all situations though. So I am not sure I would want to turn it off in BIOS just now!