Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] lowish-latency patch and toolchain
From: Paul Winkler (slinkp23_AT_yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 10 2000 - 00:27:50 EEST
(not followed-up to linux-kernel because I don't know if I have
anything to say that they need to read...)
Tom Pincince wrote:
(a lot of sensible things about being realistic)
Hear, hear. As I see it, the big issue is that we want people to be
able to easily dedicate a linux box to audio, and that currently
this is only possible with a "kludge" patch.
> or combination of these functions. It is not reasonable to assume that
> reconfiguring of these core functions can be done on the fly without
> dropouts. For example one may want to use the box as a RT synthesizer or
> fx processor in a performance setting and choose to load all unit
> generators at the beginning then spin down the hard disk to eliminate
> the noise. Here latency requirements *may* be easily met because there
> is no disk i/o and no dynamic loading of modules. If the performer
> suddenly feels that the music is so great that he wants to record it, it
> is not a reasonable design criteria to expect the box to output audio to
> the soundcard without a dropout while simultaniously starting up the
> hard drive, opening the recording app, and performing file allocation.
OK, but I sincerely hope that it would be possible to start
recording on-the-fly in a scenario where the user has anticipated
that this might need to happen, and assuming that the user has
purchased hardware that's up to the job.
Again, the point is not "I must be able to do this regardless of
anything else that might be happening", but rather "I must be able
to do this reliably if I don't do anything really dumb".
Once that is possible, we can work on finding ways to reduce the
list of what qualifies as "really dumb". In a perfect world the
"really dumb" list would be empty, but none of us should expect to
live in a perfect world.
We just want to do everything you can do today with Windows and
hopefully some things you can't. :)
--
................. paul winkler ..................
slinkP arts: music, sound, illustration, design, etc.
web page: http://www.ulster.net/~abigoo
A member of ARMS: http://www.reacharms.com
or http://www.mp3.com/arms
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