I've managed without one so far, and after a little tuning (i.e. putting soundcard in a different slot!) seem to have managed to banish XRUNs. I've tried the sample files at http://www.alsa-project.org but they don't seem to make any difference. I'm using SUSE 9.3 x86_64 which comes with alsa 1.0.9. I've not rebuilt the kernel to provide it with any realtime support. -- David Haggett