[PD] How to increase audio latency on linux?

[Roman Haefeli]

Hi all

For certain types (non-interactive) Pd patches, I'd like to be able to
set a large audio buffer, say 1s or more. However, I figured I'm not
able to do that on linux. 

With -alsa only the -blocksize parameter has any effect, but the maximum
allowed value is 2048 which still feels like only 200ms.

With -jack, neither the -audiobuf nor the -blocksize parameter have any
effect. It seems only the parameters applied to jackd have any effect on
the audio buffer, but non of the pd parameters (-audiobuf / -blocksize).
In jackd, the maximum I can have is 4096 frames/period and 2
periods/buffer which corresponds to 186ms @ 44.1kHz. Setting any higher
number for 'periods/buffer' results in the jackd server not staring. 

Recently, I figured that running Pd on Windows (7) with ASIO allows to
set virtually any -audiobuf value which allows to do tons of stuff in
zero logical time without risking a drop-out. I'd love to be able to do
that as well in linux. Is it possible? Or is this is an advantage of
Windows/Asio over Linux/Alsa?

Cheers
Roman