[linux-audio-user] latency questions

[Michael Solberg]

> 2) IRQ mess.  dmesg lists that almost every device that is detected is
> on irq 10, including the onboard sound (i8x0) and video card (nVidia).
> As a result, in X, I get static and pops as the audio is delayed.
> Searching further, I noticed a message saying the APIC wasn't being used
> due to a buggy bios provided by Dell.  This could explain why everything
> is pushed to IRQ 10.
>
> Has anyone had these problems, and more importantly, gotten around them?
> I'm not sure if the bios problem mentioned is accurate for the 2650.
> Looking through the kernel source, it clumps a bunch of models together.
> I'm tempted to hack through that and see if it does crash...

I've had lots of IRQ issues on Dell servers, and the trick was normally to
disable unneeded stuff in the BIOS, most importantly, USB, if you can
afford it.  (Why USB was on by default in our 2U rack mount servers is
another question entirely.  :-) )