hi,<br>I totally agree with Michal about the OS. I haven't tried MacOS but i know for sure that XP can't beat a good rt Linux kernel. <br>That being said, I personnally spent about 6 months trying various Linux distros before i found a good match with my hardware. Although I have had very little luck with Ubuntu, you should probably start with this OS, and then try other options (Pure:Dyne, Fedora with Planet CCRMA, 64 Studio...). Most of these come with a live version which you can try without installing anything. <br>
Here's what I'd advise you to do everytime you install a new distro:<br>1) Install it or run the live cd (of course)<br>2) Run QJAckCtl or Jack Control to try the audio server first (google it to find the proper settings for realtime use). If you don't get a decent latency without any Xruns (shouldn't be higher than 6 ms on your hardware), then you can either try another distro OR install the rt-kernel for your OS (in case the standard install did not include it). <br>
3) Once you are sure that JACK is working fine with a low latency and no Xruns, you can try your Pd patches. <br><br>Hope this helps.<br><br>Pierre<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2010/2/7 Michal Seta <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mis@artengine.ca">mis@artengine.ca</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 9:22 PM, Jeffrey Concepcion<br>
<<a href="mailto:jeffreyconcepcion@gmail.com">jeffreyconcepcion@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Thanks for the suggestions, i'll deffinately be looking into your<br>
> suggestions (i'm not familiar with some of the terms ). For now i must deal<br>
> with what i have at home, which is an acer netbook w/ windows Xp @ 1.6 GHz,<br>
> 1GB RAM btw! No external soundcard as of yet. i should get (in theory) a<br>
> similar result to Pierre's so i'll be trying that approach for now<br>
<br>
Don't be fooled by the processor Hz count. First of all, different<br>
operating systems deal with system resources in different ways.<br>
Whether you can get reliable, low latency performance from XP on a<br>
netbook is beyond my experience but AFAIK, Windows and MacOS are not<br>
as transparent and easily tuned as *NIX are. I still use very lean<br>
and small window manager when I want to be sure to have clean audio<br>
without dropouts in low latency.<br>
<br>
Beyond that, the hardware performance has a lot to do with latency.<br>
The cheap audio interfaces that are bundled with today's computers,<br>
especially netbooks, are not necessarily useful for for real-time, low<br>
latency work. They will usually require a relatively large buffers to<br>
convert analog<->digital without hick-ups and that will add up to the<br>
buffers needed by the audio driver, pd, CPU's workload etc.<br>
<br>
That said, you may want to look at this thread (and/or google similar):<br>
<a href="http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lau/2009/5/6/154392" target="_blank">http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lau/2009/5/6/154392</a><br>
<br>
There are some people using linux on netbooks for realtime processing<br>
and therefore it is possible. YYMV, depending on your needs, your<br>
perception of "real time" and the hardware/software configuration.<br>
Note, that if you want to give linux a try you can grab pure:dyne or<br>
ubuntu and install it on a USB stick or HD and take it from there<br>
until you decide which OS works best for your particular needs.<br>
pure:dyne will give you immediate access to media applications<br>
(including pd) and realtime kernel.<br>
<br>
I am actually working these days with an Acer netbook (aspire one)<br>
running ubuntu 9.10. Using a rt kernel improves audio performance<br>
somewhat. I just used a stock rt build, I could probably roll my own,<br>
tuned to my liking but I think I am getting too old for that :).<br>
However, the hardware cannot really keep up with very low latencies.<br>
My focus is not on getting lowest possible latency right now so I do<br>
not have any better advice at the moment.<br>
<br>
half a cent from yours truly.<br>
<br>
./MiS<br>
</blockquote></div><br>