[linux-audio-user] JACK configuration: Preventing system lockups

Hi,

I'm playing a lot with SuperCollider, which means that I quite often
overtax the processor within a JACK app. When I was using a patched 2.4
kernel it used to say it was "zombified" and need to be re-started, but
since upgrading to Fedora Core 4 and the Planet CCRMA patched 2.6 kernel
it just seems to lock up my system: I might still be able to hear some
horribly distorted sound but the mouse pointer doesn't move and
keypresses aren't registered for a very long time so I quite often have
to do a hard reset (this sometimes used to happen with the 2.4 kernel
when plugins in Ardour ran into denormal problems as well). It also
seems strange that this can happen quite suddenly after several seconds
of QJackCtl saying I'm only using a few percent of the CPU.

My question then, is is this a difference in the way JACK is
configured? Can I set it up so that it will zombify processes before
they lock up the GUI? I tried running Jack in soft mode but I could
hardly do anything without getting loads of dropouts.

On a related note, is there a JACK configuration HOWTO anywhere? Things
I am currently mystified by include the meaning of the phrase "periods
per buffer" and how to tell whether my (cheapo laptop internal)
soundcard should work better at 44100Hz or 48000.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Nathaniel Virgo
Received on Sun Sep 11 20:15:05 2005