[LAU] small/cheap devices that can run jackd?

david gnome at hawaii.rr.com
Wed Nov 16 06:39:31 UTC 2011


Ken Restivo wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:12:06PM -1000, david wrote:
>> Ken Restivo wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 10:10:13PM -1000, david wrote:
>>>> Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
>>>>> On 10/24/2011 07:23 PM, Alessandro Preziosi (licnep) wrote:
>>>>>> Does anybody have any idea for a device 
>>>>>> (smartphone/tablet/netbook/mini-pc...) that could run jackd
>>>>>> and thus be used as an effects processor or synth module? I
>>>>>> really don't know where to look, but the idea intrigues me.
>>>>>> It should probably be something with a usb port, in order
>>>>>> to connect midi stuff or an external audio card. Any idea?
>>>>> Hello Alessandro,
>>>>> 
>>>>> A netbook is probably your best bet. I'm using a cheap
>>>>> Packard Bell myself as a guitar effect unit or as a synth
>>>>> module. Took some time to set it up but it works remarkably
>>>>> well.
>>>> And if you set it up so it's running either no GUI or a very
>>>> light desktop environment, and turn off things like wireless,
>>>> it should work  reasonably. I believe the person on the list
>>>> who uses a netbook for  synthesizer uses linxusampler loading a
>>>> 4GB piano aoundfont on a 2GB  netbook without any problems.
>>> That would have been me, I think. I gigged more or less
>>> constantly with this for over 2 years.
>>> 
>>> Circa 2008 era Asus EEE 1000, 1.2Ghz Atom, with SSD drive, 2GB
>>> RAM.
>>> 
>>> I ran, simultaneously, LinuxSampler, several FluidSynth
>>> instances, MonoSynth, Beatrix, several Jack-Rack instances packed
>>> with LADSPA stuff, a mixer app, some homegrown daemons in c and
>>> pythin, and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Live.
>>> All night long. This was of course with an Ingo RT kernel.
>>> 
>>> Worked great. I'd recommend netbooks for Linux audio live
>>> performance.
>> Thanks, Ken, thought it was you. The newer netbooks (my wife's is
>> about 6 months old) runs a dual-core, 1.6GHz Atom.
> 
> I should note, IIRC mine isn't dual-core, but it lied and said it
> was, it using some weird hyperthreading thing. It crashed the Ingo RT
> kernel, so I turned it off in the BIOS. It's a single-core machine,
> and shows up as a single-core machine, and all is well.

Yah, the Intel processors offer hyperthreading, which is supposed to 
give them the ability to run multiple threads at the same time on a 
single-core.

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community


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