Re: [LAU] benchmarking your audio system

Joan Quintana wrote:
> I had the idea in mind to test my machine (and trying to benchmark the tests), loading the session with a chain of JACK clients, in order to know the limits of my system and in what conditions the system is stressed, and when I would have more chances of XRUNS.
>
> The chain would be something like this.
>
> *playing a midi file with Rosegarden (a midifile full of tracks)
> *fluidsynth as a soft synth, loading a heavy soundfont.
> *JACK RACK for LADSPA effects (load several processor consuming effects)
> *recording the session into Ardour, at the same time that monitoring the output to the speakers
>
> Meanwhile I will monitor the system performance (processor & RAM). (I thing that Conky System Monitor would do the task of saving a log file for later parsing). I don't know if it is possible to fetch the number of XRuns from a file or log.
>
> Questions:
> -how can I stress even more this test?

While it's doing all that, fire up some complex synthesizer patches in
Pure Data or csound or AmSynth or AMS or Zyn or some other synthesizer
that does a lot of processing to generate its sound. Synthesizer patches
that generate their own changing sounds would be great. Alsa Modular
Synthesizer has a living_phaser patch and probably other patches that do
that.

Or you could download and install the trial version of the Bibble photo
processing program <http://www.bibblelabs.com/>. It is one of the most
processor and memory intensive programs I've ever encountered. Install
it, do some basic processing of an entire directory of large images,
then have it batch process the images ...

Another thought: add a Windows audio app running under WINE or on a
virtual machine running Windows.

Oh, and install XFractint and have it do a deep zoom somewhere into the
Mandelbrot set.

Then do your email and browse the web while keeping notes in OpenOffice
all at the same time.

I think that might be enough to stress-test a modern PC.

> -is it possible to make this process standard, searching for a general method trying to say if this machine, this configuration or this OS is better than other?
> -is there something left that I need to take into account?
> -is all that a good idea?

Well, I'd rather spend my time writing something, drawing pictures,
working on photos, or making music - but whatever floats your boat! ;-)

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
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