Re: [fluid-dev] Crazy non-Xrun Xruns

[Ken Restivo]

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On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 12:28:03PM -0700, Dave Serls wrote:
> 
>   I haven't seen this message, but I'm more of a recidivist. Having found a
>   combination that mostly works and is only moderately annoying, I kept it.
>   I would suggest a sound card with more impeccable alsa creds.  Does the Mac 
> Mini
>   have room for a PCI addon?  The ICE1712 chipset cards are quite stable.
>   (M-Audio 2496, Delta 1010, etc. )  Support for onboard Intel chipsets has 
> been,
>   in my experience, not trustworthy.  


Well, I'm stunned, but.... it just worked.

I mean, it worked. Out of the box. On Debian Etch.

I plugged in the FA-66, followed the steps on Pau Arumi's blog 
(http://arumi.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/getting-firewire-audio-work-on-linux/), 
and... it just worked.

I've settled on a jack config of /usr/bin/jackd -R -d freebob -p256 -n2 , with 
excellent low latency (mostly fluidsynt stuff here) on a mostly vanilla 
2.6.19.1 kernel. I have a RT kernel around here but I can't think of a reason 
to arse with it, unless I wanted to try -p64 or something.

As a bonus, it solved another frustrating problem: the fact that Firefox and 
tools like avidemux don't support JACK, nor do I really want to wrap them in 
things that'll give them RT priority and lock their RAM either. Instead, I 
solved the problem with hardware: I run the yucky hda-intel in ALSA mode, to 
handle all the non-JACK apps, and physically connect the outputs of the 
hda-intel into two Line In inputs on the FA-66. Both my monitors and my 
headphones come out of the FA-66. I supposes if I had an optical cable I could 
run the hda-intel digital outs into the S/PDIF inputs on the FA-66, and 
eliminate a D-A/A-D step. So now I can, for example, surf around Freesound 
while having a Rosegarden/Ardour/Hydrogen/Fluidsynth project going at the same 
time, and use the Flash mp3 player built in to freesound, to hear how the 
samples fit in (or don't) with what I'm working on.

It's also small and self-powered (on the Mac Mini, anyway), and I could use it 
with any modern Sony or Apple laptop for field recordings, if I wanted or 
needed to do so.

Well worth the money, I have to say.

Wow. Just... wow.

- -ken
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