Joel,
About the only thing I can think of to try (other than an IDE drive) is to
adjust the latencies of the SCSI controller and the sound card. Use setpci. I
think I've got an example on my web site and, IIRC, a link to an article on
setting latency.
Jan
On Mon, 31 May 2004 23:00 , Joel White <cv223@xxxxxxxxxxx> sent:
>Aha, a thread convergence!
>
>I started the "Ardour..." thread lamenting long xruns under the 2.6
>kernels. Based on recommendations on the list, I went back to a 2.4
>kernel, still having the occasional long xrun. In the "XRuns..."
>thread, the following from a post by Jan Depner caught my eye:
>
>"What kind of disk drives? Adaptec SCSI controllers can give you
>problems with xruns."
>
>Uh-oh. I'm using an Adaptec controller on my main board (a 7890). With
>a little digging, I came up with the following from the ST Audio website
>(http://www.staudio.de/kb/english/conflicts/):
>
>"The famous Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller series is causing performance
>problems when installed in the same system as our DSP24 series and when
>the audiodata is stored on a SCSI-HDD connected to the controller. To
>get good results in benchmark tests, the Adaptec controller keeps steady
>access to the PCI bus. The result is a reduction of data transfer of
>other PCI cards like the DSP24 hardware. This means that the ASIO/MME
>buffer size (which is the latency) needs to be set to a relative high
>value to avoid stuttered audio playback and drop-outs during recording.
>The performance problems can be reduced if both the DSP24 and the
>Adaptec controller both have a unique and unshared IRQ. Still the
>performance will not be as good compared to the regular onboard
>IDE-controller of a modern mainboard. This means that the best solution
>is to use a IDE-HDD to save the audiodata from within your recording
>software. The simple presence of the controller (that is used while the
>audiodata is stored on a IDE-HDD) is no problem."
>
>Uh-oh again. The 7890 is the on-board version of the 2940. I thought I
>had the xruns pretty much under control with the 2.4 kernel, then I
>picked up a M-Audio Delta 1010LT (I was jonesing for the 8 channels of
>input!). Ugh. I can't record more than a few seconds of 8 channel
>input before a 100msec+ xruns brings everything to a halt. Even
>recording 2 channels won't make it through a 4:00 min song.
>
>So, am I completely hosed with my Adaptec SCSI drive setup? Anybody
>have any insight into these Adaptec controllers? I've fussed with the
>setpci latency_timer settings (from Jan Depner's "Installing and
>configuring ALSA, JACK, & Ardour..." web site), but still see long
>xruns. Trying an IDE drive is not that simple, as I don't have any
>drive slots left in the box (I've got 4 SCSI drives setup as a RAID).
>So, I'd like to exhaust all possibilities before trying new drive
>configurations.
>
>Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions would be _greatly_ appreciated!
>
>Thanks,
>
>Joel
>
>
>
