[PD] crazy weird stuff happening.

[Tom Dunstan]

hi crew(s)
i just discovered little problem that i cannot figure out at all. it has 
been happening for the last couple of weeks and i really need to iron it 
out before i lose faith in my tools.
i am posting this to both the demudi list and the pd because i'm not 
sure where the problem originates. i am using demudi with pd 38 test 
7(althought this same problem is occurring with devel-37 and the stable 
37). So i have this (pd) patch and admittedly its quite big, lots of 
live sampling and looping. i have made bigger patches before so i'm not 
convinced that i'm being excessive. it runs fine for about 20 minutes 
then all of a sudden the whole system goes into a melt down. the mouse 
is really slow and X looks as if its going to give up. (in some cases it 
does). my computer goes all crazy and the hard disk light is flashing 
like mad. the cpu meters (both pd and linux 'top' ) don't seem to be 
peaking out, its hovering around 30%. this all happened in a rehearsal 
the other day and it was quite embarrassing. i'm not quite sure where 
the problem is originating so any suggestions that i should check out 
would be great. am i using too many GOPs perhaps?

one other question while i'm here, i am also running JACK at 11.6 
latency. the latency for the piece i am working on is important so i am 
reluctant to go slower here. the funny thing is though, i can't seem to 
get this latency with using 'just' ALSA. i get a bunch of clicks if i go 
below 20ms. this i odd to me because i would have thought that it would 
be more effiecient to use just ALSA without JACK to get super low 
latency. plus i am not using any other software besides PD so i don't 
really need jack running....do i?
any suggestion would be fantastic.
cheers
tom

p4 2.6 (800fsb)
512RAM
M-Audio Delta 1010.