Re: a joint letter on low latency and Linux

[goingware.com]

> > A mixing desk has to be able to take multiple streams from
> > multiple sources, line them up and generate a glitch free
> > master. It has to be realtime because in the music biz this
> > is mostly done by ear (although there is also some queing
> > done as well, ie things like Cakewalk and other systems that
> > are already digital).
> 
> I don't see how Linux can ever do this  - without expensive peripheral
> devices.   

Why not?  BeOS can do this right now.

Why don't you accept it as a challenge and match its performance?  Or would
you rather that a community that sees performance as such a significant asset
that they would readily switch operating systems to whoever could give them
that performance, switch to BeOS instead?

I'd rather see Linux doing good audio than have to stick with the BeOS, but
right now the audio performance of playing a single MP3 file just blows in
the 2.4.0 series kernels.  This is with xaudio taking up 3% of the CPU at peak
times, but it readily drops to 0 and the music shuts off until I move a window
around in X.

That sort of thing never happens in BeOS.

Now you may ask, why don't I fix it rather than criticize.  I'm trying to do
what I can to help out, by testing the new kernel patches as they come out, but
I don't yet know enough about the kernel API to be able to diagnose this.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
[e-mail]

   Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.