Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

Hello,

I read a lot a great thing about the audiophile 24/96 on the net, and i
decided to buy it to get better latency than my old sblive! I just
received the audiophile 24/96 and unfortunatly, i have a lot of XRuns
with when i run jackd.

I already tried the following :

- i changed irq (several changes : irq5, then irq 10)
- Disable nearly all the inboard harware (serial port, parallel port,
usb)
- i changed the Pci port
- i tried to run jackd as root
- i even tried to raise buffer at big values : 512, 1024, and even there
i have some (1 or 2) xruns
- i'm now trying with kernel 2.6.6 to see if things are better


Hardware :
  MSI K7N2Delta MB
  Athlon 2400
  Nvidia Geforce 4mmx
  Audiophile 24/96 M-Audio

Sofware :
  Debian/Testing
  Kernel 2.6.5
  Alsa 1.0.4rc2
  Realtime-Lsm 0.1.0
  Jackd 0.98


Do you have ideas, before i return the card to the shop ?

Regards,
	Rémi Bernhard.



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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Remi Bernhard]
>I read a lot a great thing about the audiophile 24/96 on the net, and i
>decided to buy it to get better latency than my old sblive! I just
>received the audiophile 24/96 and unfortunatly, i have a lot of XRuns
>with when i run jackd.

my old system had various 2.4.x-ll kernels, asus board and a k6-III
450, then migrated to kernel 2.4.19-ll, a cheap-as-hell board (forgot
the brand name) and an athlon xp 2k, ALSA versions ranging from
pre-0.9 CVS to 1.0.3.

the PCI audiophile 24/96 ran and runs smooth as a train in all
configurations at 64 frames / 44.1 kHz.

obvious question, is your kernel ll-patched? if not, go here:

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~akpm/linux/schedlat.html

(i gather that 2.4 is still the better choice for low-latency
operations.)

oh, btw, the ISA 'Blaster AWE64 i used to run in the old board did
64/44.1 just as stable as the audiophile.

cheers,

tim


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Re: [Alsa-devel] Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

Hi, 


On Sat, 29 May 2004 12:52:15 +0200 (CEST)
Tim Goetze <tim@quitte.de> wrote:

> [Remi Bernhard]
> >I read a lot a great thing about the audiophile 24/96 on the net, and
> >i decided to buy it to get better latency than my old sblive! I just
> >received the audiophile 24/96 and unfortunatly, i have a lot of XRuns
> >with when i run jackd.
> 
> obvious question, is your kernel ll-patched? if not, go here:
> 
> http://www.zipworld.com.au/~akpm/linux/schedlat.html

As i said , 

<rb>
Sofware :
  Debian/Testing
  Kernel 2.6.5
</rb>

So i have 2.6.5 kernel, and not 2.4.x. Do you think i should install
2.4.25 instead ?

> 
> (i gather that 2.4 is still the better choice for low-latency
> operations.)
> 

I read the alsa-* archives, and i saw a thread with two people who had
good latency results with 2.6.x. 
Could someone tell me if man can achieve a buffer size <=128 with
audiophile 2496 and kernel 2.6.x ?

> oh, btw, the ISA 'Blaster AWE64 i used to run in the old board did
> 64/44.1 just as stable as the audiophile.

Great !

Regards,
	Remi.


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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Jan Depner]

On Sat, 2004-05-29 at 06:16, Remi Bernhard wrote:

> So i have 2.6.5 kernel, and not 2.4.x. Do you think i should install
> 2.4.25 instead ?
> 
> > 
> > (i gather that 2.4 is still the better choice for low-latency
> > operations.)
> > 
> 
> I read the alsa-* archives, and i saw a thread with two people who had
> good latency results with 2.6.x. 
> Could someone tell me if man can achieve a buffer size <=128 with
> audiophile 2496 and kernel 2.6.x ?
> 

Yes.  The 2.4 kernels with low latency patch are better than 2.6 at
present (even the mm series).  The buffer sizes you can achieve are
dependent on so many different things (disks, FSB, memory,
configuration...) that there is no way to tell.  You just have to try it
and find out.  As far as minimizing buffer size is concerned - if you
are doing live audio or you want to monitor recording with inboard
effects turned on you need to have a small buffer size.  With the envy24
chipset cards you can use hardware monitoring so you can set the buffer
size to 2048 and have zero latency monitoring.  Don't confuse monitoring
latency with system latency.

Jan





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Re: [Alsa-devel] Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

Hi,


> As far as minimizing buffer size is concerned - if
> you are doing live audio or you want to monitor recording with inboard
> effects turned on you need to have a small buffer size.  With the
> envy24 chipset cards you can use hardware monitoring so you can set
> the buffer size to 2048 and have zero latency monitoring.  Don't
> confuse monitoring latency with system latency.


To be more sharp, i need to reduce latency because i use softsynth
(zynaddsubfx, fluidsynth, etc.) that needs a low latency when playing
from midi keyboard, and if not, there is a "lag" time, that man can
hear, between the time when you hit the key, and the time it is played.

I don't know about wich latency i spoke, i think it is system latency.
So I think that buffer size is **the** parameter to change.

Is that true ?

Regards,
	Remi.




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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Remi Bernhard]
>To be more sharp, i need to reduce latency because i use softsynth
>(zynaddsubfx, fluidsynth, etc.) that needs a low latency when playing
>from midi keyboard, and if not, there is a "lag" time, that man can
>hear, between the time when you hit the key, and the time it is played.
>
>I don't know about wich latency i spoke, i think it is system latency.
>So I think that buffer size is **the** parameter to change.
>
>Is that true ?

yes.

tim


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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Jan Depner]

On Sat, 2004-05-29 at 07:13, Tim Goetze wrote:
> [Remi Bernhard]
> >To be more sharp, i need to reduce latency because i use softsynth
> >(zynaddsubfx, fluidsynth, etc.) that needs a low latency when playing
> >from midi keyboard, and if not, there is a "lag" time, that man can
> >hear, between the time when you hit the key, and the time it is played.
> >
> >I don't know about wich latency i spoke, i think it is system latency.
> >So I think that buffer size is **the** parameter to change.
> >
> >Is that true ?
> 
> yes.
> 
	Yes, that is the parameter to change but no, that isn't system
latency.  System latency is response to interrupt time not buffer fill
time.

Jan




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[ot] Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Jan Depner]

>On Sat, 2004-05-29 at 07:13, Tim Goetze wrote:
>> [Remi Bernhard]
>> >To be more sharp, i need to reduce latency because i use softsynth
>> >(zynaddsubfx, fluidsynth, etc.) that needs a low latency when playing
>> >from midi keyboard, and if not, there is a "lag" time, that man can
>> >hear, between the time when you hit the key, and the time it is played.
>> >
>> >I don't know about wich latency i spoke, i think it is system latency.
>> >So I think that buffer size is **the** parameter to change.
>> >
>> >Is that true ?
>>
>> yes.
>>
>	Yes, that is the parameter to change but no, that isn't system
>latency.  System latency is response to interrupt time not buffer fill
>time.

depends on what 'system' we're talking about, which isn't really clear
in the first place (nor is it too important, but here goes anyway ...
:)

you can see the whole setup as the system, then latency is the time
from keypress to voltage change at the DAC out. or you can just look
at the kernel side as as you do. or you can look at the time from MIDI
interrupt to the audio DAC converting the first affected audio sample.

all examples of valid 'systems' to look at in this context, depending
on whether you assume the musician's, the kernel- or the audio
application-programmer's view.

sorry for nitpicking.

tim


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Re: [ot] Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Jan Depner]

On Sat, 2004-05-29 at 09:31, Tim Goetze wrote:

> depends on what 'system' we're talking about, which isn't really clear
> in the first place (nor is it too important, but here goes anyway ...
> :)
> 
> you can see the whole setup as the system, then latency is the time
> from keypress to voltage change at the DAC out. or you can just look
> at the kernel side as as you do. or you can look at the time from MIDI
> interrupt to the audio DAC converting the first affected audio sample.
> 
> all examples of valid 'systems' to look at in this context, depending
> on whether you assume the musician's, the kernel- or the audio
> application-programmer's view.
> 
	Agreed.  But the problem that keeps popping up on the lists is that
people who are not doing live sound, have cards that do hardware
monitoring, and don't need to use a tiny buffer size waste their time
trying to get the minimum buffer size because they think they need to
get 2-3ms latency.  So, they get xruns out the wazoo and wonder how to
fix it.  In this case he *needs* a small buffer size though since he's
doing, essentially, a live application.

Jan




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Re: [ot] Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Jan Depner]
>	Agreed.  But the problem that keeps popping up on the lists is that
>people who are not doing live sound, have cards that do hardware
>monitoring, and don't need to use a tiny buffer size waste their time
>trying to get the minimum buffer size because they think they need to
>get 2-3ms latency.  So, they get xruns out the wazoo and wonder how to
>fix it.  In this case he *needs* a small buffer size though since he's
>doing, essentially, a live application.

agreed.

there must be a wiki or some other sort of documentation regarding all
the latency issues out there. at least it would be nice to hand out an
URL that answers the most common questions (they do indeed seem to
come up time and again even on the -dev lists).

tim


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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Remi Bernhard]
>So i have 2.6.5 kernel, and not 2.4.x. Do you think i should install
>2.4.25 instead ?

i do think so because i never saw any hard facts about latency posted
for the 2.6 series, while 2.4.x-ll is well documented and proven to
work quite well here and elsewhere.

it _could_ also be that your graphics subsystem is hogging the PCI bus
for long enough to cause xruns, but that is mostly guessing since i
never laid my hands on a linux box with nvidia hardware. i take it
you're not running graphics-intensive applications while testing the
audio subsystem anyway.

as Jan has pointed out, make sure your IDE subsystem is using DMA on
all devices, too. (man hdparm)

tim


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Re: [Alsa-devel] Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

On Sat, 29 May 2004 13:44:40 +0200 (CEST)
Tim Goetze <tim@quitte.de> wrote:

> [Remi Bernhard]
> >So i have 2.6.5 kernel, and not 2.4.x. Do you think i should install
> >2.4.25 instead ?
> 
> i do think so because i never saw any hard facts about latency posted
> for the 2.6 series, while 2.4.x-ll is well documented and proven to
> work quite well here and elsewhere.

I tried with kernel 2.4.25 + lowlatency patch.
I have the same xruns :-/

Any other idea ?

Regards,
	Rémi.


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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Tim Goetze]

[Remi Bernhard]
>I tried with kernel 2.4.25 + lowlatency patch.
>I have the same xruns :-/
>
>Any other idea ?

checklist:

* running jackd as root? with -R option?
* tried running jackd without any clients?
* IDE-DMA enabled?
* ll-sysctl interface chosen at kernel build time? turned it on?
* X running? tried without?
* tried 'latencytest' from the ALSA tree?

tim


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Re: [Alsa-devel] Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

Hi Tim and all,


On Sat, 29 May 2004 16:34:49 +0200 (CEST)
Tim Goetze <tim@quitte.de> wrote:

> [Remi Bernhard]
> >I tried with kernel 2.4.25 + lowlatency patch.
> >I have the same xruns :-/
> >
> >Any other idea ?
> 
> checklist:
> 
> * running jackd as root? with -R option?

Tried -> failed.

> * tried running jackd without any clients?

It worked, but as i put some clients, i get xruns again.

> * IDE-DMA enabled?

Yes.

> * ll-sysctl interface chosen at kernel build time? turned it on?

Yes.

> * X running? tried without?

I didn't tried that.

> * tried 'latencytest' from the ALSA tree?

I didn't tried that.

I thank you a lot guys for your help and ideas, but now i've done
enought twiking / hacking / patching kernel, switching the audiophile
from pci port to pci port, changing irq, recompiling kernel 2.6.5,
2.4.25, 2.6.6, patching again, fails again, etc. etc.

Now i have reinstalled my old sblive! with 512 buffer size, and i'm
happy with it (for the moment). I think i'll return the audiophile
24/96 next week.

Thanx again for all your help.

Regards,
	Rémi Bernhard.




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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Jan Depner]

On Sun, 2004-05-30 at 04:09, Remi Bernhard wrote:
> Hi Tim and all,
> 
> 
> On Sat, 29 May 2004 16:34:49 +0200 (CEST)
> Tim Goetze <tim@quitte.de> wrote:
> 
> > [Remi Bernhard]
> > >I tried with kernel 2.4.25 + lowlatency patch.
> > >I have the same xruns :-/
> > >
> > >Any other idea ?
> > 
> > checklist:
> > 
> > * running jackd as root? with -R option?
> 
> Tried -> failed.

	If this failed, you're not running real-time.  What error message did
you get?

Jan




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Re: Xruns with Audiophile 2496 M-audio

[Remi Bernhard]

On Sun, 30 May 2004 08:35:21 -0500
Jan Depner <eviltwin69@cableone.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 2004-05-30 at 04:09, Remi Bernhard wrote:
> > Hi Tim and all,
> > 
> > 
> > On Sat, 29 May 2004 16:34:49 +0200 (CEST)
> > Tim Goetze <tim@quitte.de> wrote:
> > 
> > > [Remi Bernhard]
> > > >I tried with kernel 2.4.25 + lowlatency patch.
> > > >I have the same xruns :-/
> > > >
> > > >Any other idea ?
> > > 
> > > checklist:
> > > 
> > > * running jackd as root? with -R option?
> > 
> > Tried -> failed.
> 
> 	If this failed, you're not running real-time.  What error
> 	message did
> you get?

Oops, sorry, my mistake. **This** worked.

Regards,
	Rémi Bernhard.




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