Thanks, Arnold, for the heads-up on this particular kernel. I found it to hang on two occasions (and I haven't had it for that long either). I'm not too familiar with PPAs... (am reading up right now). I assume you meant that I should follow the instructions on this page: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/+archive/ppa and then choose the right realtime kernel package from synaptic, or command line. Am I correct? Jörn, my apologies, I realised that I haven't answered all your questions - my frames/period is 256, periods/buffer is 2, sample rate is 44100, giving me a latency of 11.6 sec. While typing this, I noticed a parameter 'Timeout', which is currently 500 msec. The only "error" message says something about timeout and linuxsampler - so I was wondering whether I can change this parameter to a 'safer' level. What does this 'timeout' parameter mean? The qjackctl popup says "Set client timeout in milliseconds", but I didn't quite follow. What happens if this parameter is too high, or too low? Also, I've noticed that the realtime kernel + Icewm option *does* reduce the crash frequency by a huge margin, something which I did not make clear in my last mail. However, the realtime kernel hung twice on one occasion (before a live perfomance), forcing me to switch to the generic kernel, and the crash happened during the performance (does not help increase my fanbase.. :(). On the whole, I cannot confidently rely on the linux setup until there is some failsafe in place, and I'm convinced that it is very, very unlikely for a crash to happen during a live performance. Looking forward to suggestions/pointers/questions. Thanks in advance! Cheers, Guru Arnold Krille wrote: -- Guru Prasad B.R. Centre for Ecological Sciences Indian Institute of Science Bangalore - 560 012 India Ph:+91-80-22933103

I hear you, and you're right, I use Linux live and have had exactly the same thought. Behavior such as you're reporting, is why I won't use Ubuntu and several other distros, including updated 64 Studio; I have been where you are and won't go back :-). If I were you, I would try AVLinux, use its highly tweaked default kernel, and see how it works for you. One of the interesting aspects of AVLinux is the default kernel is not RT, but is capable of running Jack in RT mode anyway. I suspect that this has kept me out of a lot of trouble. I imagine my latency using this kernel is higher -- 5.8 ms -- but it's low enough that I don't have to care, and don't have to worry about issues RT can bring up. I'm pretty sure that if I weren't running AVLinux, I would probably be using Sabayon, probably with an RT Gentoo kernel. The stability yet up-to-date nature of Sabayon has surprised me quite a few times. I have never had a crash under AVLinux with Qsynth. But I have never had strong reliability with LinuxSampler, it tends to crash (not the machine, just the app) when closing, and takes an attempt or two to reopen when it does. I like my 800MB Yamaha piano sample too, but ghostess + fluidsynth-dssi gives me an SF2 Steinway which is very good indeed, and I like Steinway tone better. I did play a real Bosendorfer once...heavenly... J.E.B.