[PD] soundcard noise

[Andrew (Andy) W. Schmeder]

> whenever i move a window, or the edit a pd patch i get some
> really nasty additional noise on my audicards.

When you move a window or edit the pd patch, the CPU has to do a lot of
work to redraw the gui.  The result is that some fragments of audio do
not get calculated, and thus you will hear a nasty 'click' when the
audio signal suddenly drops out.

Also you should become familiar with the sound of the click (as compared
to 'noise', which it is not) since the click is the most dreaded sound
which all PD programmers must go to great lengths to prevent.

> i m starting pd now with -frags 8, which reduced it, but not 100% .

That command will add latency to the audio stream... which only slightly
reduces the chance that audio frames will be dropped during gui updates.

Other things you can try:

- Run PD w/ realtime priority (using the -rt flag and a set-uid bit)
- Close/shutdown as many applications as possible
- Use a lightweight window manager (e.g. fvwm, twm...)
- Get a faster computer

However nothing you do can assure the absence of a click since Linux is
not a real-time operating system.


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andy