xruns with Rosegarden

[Tomasz Grzelak]

Hello!

It seems that I have finally got rid off the xrun problems with Rosegarden (I spent several hours during last weekend composing my music, and got only a few xruns, but during some background downloading process, or screensaver operation; any way during composing situation was fine). I'll do more testing in next several days/weeks, 'cause I'm going to focus more on my music, but at the moment I'm quite satisfied with results.

So thanks to you all for ideas/suggestions - I decided to try some audio dedicated distribution.
But it didn't stop only on installing the new OS, I made quite many changes to the basic setup.

Let me share my experience, and all what I did to make it work, maybe someone finds it useful:

1. I chose 64studio, and installed it on a single disk (without RAID) - two partitions: one for /, and another for /home (+ swap of course).

The distribution is mainly based on Debian Etch.
Everything worked OK from the very beginning, but 'stability' of the OS was a problem for me - I really needed newer software (e.g. Hydrogen from SVN repositories). The option was to compile it, but without 'fresh' libraries, and development packages, it was rather impossible.

So I made another crusial step:

2. Upgrade to Debian Sid (unstable) :)

The process was not so smooth, but I managed to get through it.
After the upgrade, the situation was OK still - no xruns with RG detected.

Encouraged I decided to go further:

3. Compiled a newer kernel (2.6.24.7) with realtime patches (rt17).

I used the same kernel config as on my "normal" system on which I had RG xrun problems.
But running 'unstable' 64studio on my own kernel config was still fine - no problems detected.

So the next step was to:

4. 'upgrade' the software & drivers.

I downloaded & compiled:

* FFADO (beta 2.0 if I remember correctly)
* JACK 0.112.1 (SVN version)
* Hydrogen (current SVN checkout)
* Rosegarden 1.7.1
* Ardour 2.5
* ZynAddSubFX (current CVS checkout) - using the distribution provided zynaddsubfx I had quite high CPU load, and xruns when running with qsynth simultaneously. When I compiled zyn from CVS, CPU load decreased about 20-30%, and I observed no more xruns when using it with qsynth at the same time.

And the final step was (and is still) to:

6. Test the new environemnt.

Several hours spent during the weekend with satysfying results is quite optimistic.
But I suppose next few days/weeks will give the final answer about 'stability' of the solution.

Any way when I think of the 64studio installation, and my "normal" Debian unstable I can see the really big difference in using RAID in "normal" OS, and no RAID in the audio setup.
Of course, there's a lot of more software installed on my usual work system, but I don't think it could have had a negative impact on processing audio (I tried to turn off most of daemons running too).
The more I think of it now the more I suspect the RAID deamon process having bad influence on Rosegarden.
But why Rosegarden only?... I don't think I will be able to answer the question....

Any way, I'll stop thinking about it, and I hope to focus more on music now, and not on installing/configuring my OS :)

Thanks again for your help!
Cheers!

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[D. Michael McIntyre-3]

On Monday 01 September 2008, Tomasz Grzelak wrote:
> The more I think of it now the more I suspect the RAID deamon process
> having bad influence on Rosegarden.
> But why Rosegarden only?... I don't think I will be able to answer the
> question....

I don't think we'll know the answer to that ourselves, but I'm glad to see
you're finally enjoying success here.  That's great.  I was very frustrated
for you.

--
D. Michael McIntyre

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[Tomasz Grzelak]

D. Michael McIntyre pisze:

> On Monday 01 September 2008, Tomasz Grzelak wrote:
>> The more I think of it now the more I suspect the RAID deamon process
>> having bad influence on Rosegarden.
>> But why Rosegarden only?... I don't think I will be able to answer the
>> question....
>
> I don't think we'll know the answer to that ourselves, but I'm glad to see
> you're finally enjoying success here.  That's great.  I was very frustrated
> for you.
>

Thanks Michael! I was very frustrated, becase so many people could use
RG while I had not been able to, and didn't know why.
Maybe now I don't know neither, but at least found another way to use it.

Maybe I only lied about the ZynAddSubFX from CVS in my previous mail :/
I just screwed something up, and noticed it later. Setting '-p256'
(instead of 128) in the JACK command line got rid off the problem I had
described (so no need to compile zyn from cvs).

Now I must say I'm very satisfied with my audio environment, becase I
can use many other apps, and RG finally!
The more I use it, the more I see how GREAT piece of software it is!

Wishing you all continuous success with using & developing RG! :)

Cheers!
Tomek

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