I can't imagine that he's suffering from THROUGHPUT issues. RAID doesn't improve latency, for this sort of application. RAID's good for when you need higher throughput, and even 8 channels of 16-bit/44.1K audio is very low in throughput for modern drives. With a 400ms latency, I highly doubt this is his problem especially since using the 2.6 kernel makes that alot better. It's either an untuned IDE driver (2.6 may have a better chipset tuning setup automatically), or a filesystem-related problem. (Try data=writeback mode if using ext3). A 2.4.2x-preemptible kernel with low-latency engaged and a tuned IDE driver with ext3 in writeback mode, or reiserfs should definitely get you JOY with audio latency. Make sure you compile in support for IDE chipsets (VIA, SiS, Intel, etc), so Linux can best tune/adjust transfer modes and DMA timings for optimal results. Many stock distribution kernels just include generic support. =MB= -- A focus on Quality.