Hammerfall dies (?) ardour-jack continues.

I think there are only a few parameters that work for SATA. it puzzled me for a long time.

Hey Porisija, Here is the root terminal output- how well do you think i did improving the tuning? david@64studio:~$ su Password: 64studio:/home/david# synaptic 64studio:/home/david# /etc/init.d/hdparm stop 64studio:/home/david# gedit /etc/default/hdparm 64studio:/home/david# /etc/init.d/hdparm start Setting parameters of disc: (none). 64studio:/home/david# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 1260 MB in 2.00 seconds = 629.26 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 136 MB in 3.04 seconds = 44.81 MB/sec 64studio:/home/david# /etc/init.d/hdparm stop 64studio:/home/david# gedit /etc/default/hdparm 64studio:/home/david# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 1258 MB in 2.00 seconds = 628.56 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 136 MB in 3.04 seconds = 44.79 MB/sec 64studio:/home/david# i can't see as this is helping- am i wrong?

Yes, I agree with Quentin. As a non professional musician it appends some time to me to record in professional studios (not abbey road, of course...) Due to the job of some friends (musicians, sound engineers) I have the possibility to listen a lot of sound systems, monitors, hifi, headphones, etc... I do own some good stuff too. Mastering studios today ask for 24bits 96khz sound files, but if you try to hear the difference between that and a good 16/44,1khz, on any good hearing system, you won't notice the difference. It is often better to have a very good A/D converter at 24/48 than a standard or bad 24/192. Just think why some people prefer a Rosetta for their Pro-tools... And why, so, oversampling quality ? Because for a "all digital" recording and mixing studio, it allows to transform the sound, use a lot of effects, processes, etc.., and when you export to Audio CD quality you still have a very good sound. Try to work at 16/44,1, use a lot of digital effects, and listen, you will loose in quality. So when recording mixing, just think about Nyquest frequency rule (thanks Quentin for the name). If your mix is not a huge process on the sound, a good 24/48 is really good (most of all, the bits defintion is more important than the sample rate). And it is why if you make good "sound capture", you don't need a lot of process and so a lot of studios still works in 24/48, the standard ADAT quality. The better the audio converter is, the less the definition of sound is necessary, it all about dynamics and sound quality. Toine

Check this out! http://www.geocities.com/cfr707/mp3.htm Cheers,

OH - and by the way, i found After Step in the repository, and tho i have like 10 other window managers, this is the one i always use by default. IT's so light, cooperates with Gnome and KDE and GTK+ well, and the pager and desktop management is so much fun. My friends freak when they see my studio. Coming from a windoze or mac environment they're surprised by it anyway. Gnome and Enlightenment are fine for other stuff, but for realtime audio work it's AfterStep all the way. I remember being in college in about 1989 and my multimedia instructor showed us the 'NEXT' computer. I'd never loved a computer before then, and ever since i've wanted the NextStep style desktop - and NOW I HAVE IT!! too much fun... for a nerd. OH ya- I am shopping for RAM... i have a 2G limit with the motherboard. Gotta decide if I ought to build a new box, or spruce up the one i've got. I have to run Ardour a bit and see if the dropout still happens... It did drop out yesterday after about half an hour of playing a fairly small session.

I've edited this /etc/default/hdparm with these lines: harddisks="/dev/hda" hdparm_opts="-c1 -d1 -m16" as recommended. What do i do with hdparm now? this is new turf for me! dav=-0

Dav=-0, Did you manage to fix the drop-out yet? I just thought about something that happened to me way back in the beginning... My on board nvidia card did not respect my real time kernel timing, and every time you change zoom or move a window you would get sluggish video response and some audio drop-out. Sometimes even a hard click, all with no xruns whatsoever. Solved it by fitting a real PCIe nvidia card in my system, a cheap GeForce 6600, disabling the onboard device, and this made all the difference. I wish they would STOP fitting these stoooopid on-board graphics adapters on performance motherboards, capable of hosting Athlon x2 CPU's or similar. I hope this sheds some light! PS: I am running on 2GB at the moment... so much better - I tore the extra 1GB out of above mentioned winXP system, and it was the exact same type as my original ones! Bonus.

Tuning your hard drive performance. If you are pushing the envelope, and your drives becomes the bottleneck, I think this might be your next step. Otherwise you would have to go for a striped raid array filled with SCSI raptor drives... ok, that may be a little extreme (and noisy) ;-) As I wrote in another thread, (http://www.64studio.com/node/87) unless you want to make a DVD-A disk (which I don't see in our stores btw) you don't need to record 96kHz at all. The fact that you device is capable tell us a lot about the *Quality* of the 44100 conversion that you'll get. Much like fitting "V" rated tires on your car in a country that allows only 120km/h on the roads anyway. You get a safer, tighter ride. I only use 44100 or 48000, given the target of the audio. For CD or MP3/Ogg I use 44100 only, because in these formats you cannot hear the difference, as the medium cannot carry the signal. Rather be sure to use the 24bit depth of your card, as this affects your channel fidelity, and can save a soft take by supplying the extra 24dB you might need... To sell you services, do tell the customer about the grand features, but use the right ones for your productions. my 2c

Hey, What is the insterest of using hdparm ? Toine

..that updating your system memory to at least 1 GB RAM could solve your issue - with memory modules at really low prices now, I think it's worth every cent. Even 2 GB won't hurt. When you think of it, your RME card has a native 96 KHz sample frequency which means BIG amounts of data moving in and out of PC. That's why 64Studio has hdparm installed by default - check man hdparm and change the settings by editing the file /etc/default/hdparm with these lines: harddisks="/dev/hda" hdparm_opts="-c1 -d1 -m16" (Reboot or give the command "/etc/init.d/hdparm restart" as root - and not while recording your most valuable recording..)) You're using Gnome, right? Issue the command top in a terminal and look at the "Mem:" line before starting any audio software. You'll see the amount of memory used by your desktop - give or take a few megabytes.. Then fire up your normal workspace software - HDSPMixer etc., keep top running - and look at the same line again. Any difference? Gnome is a memory hog by default with all its services loaded and running. The random errors in hardware that you described could mean a lack of memory. A realtime kernel like the one that 64Studio has sets very high demands on the hardware, which your card fulfills. I have noticed that some consumer grade audio cards simply won't work properly with realtime demands, such as some Terratec cheapos (Aureon PCI 5.1). The audio chipset (cmipci) simply isn't up to the task with realtime where as it will work a normal desktop setup quite well. It your problem were software related it would occur always, not randomly. Of course hardware malfunctions are a totally different issue. A bad motherboard or PSU can easily destroy your expensive sound card.

Used to use my (suposedly good) Audigy2 card for listening to music, but the Hammerfall through the ADAT interface directly into my digi mixer is just without comparison...

The thing is that asio a poor dynamic range. Jack is so far better for digital sum, for listening, etc... With the same settings on my peripherals (big knob, speakers, etc...) it sounds more accurate, more louder, more dynamic, etc... with Linux/jack than with win/asio. That is a thing to keep in mind. Jack send to the sound card a better and higher level digital signal to handle and convert. Toine

How does one stop this from happening? i agree, the Hammerfall HDSP9652 is a great interface to use, i bought it with linux in mind. i just had my old cubase rig booted up. i can't stand the user environment, or the sound. mind you, i have never had this thing with the card output dropping in ASIO. I imagie it's a firmware thing that'll be solved or revealed to me eventually.

Sometimes I have the problem when the output given by jack to the output of my hdps multiface II. Actually, the cards put itself in security, so you have to restart it... so it may mean restart the system. Do you think it can be the case ? Anyway, I do confirm that RME hdsp soundcards sound very great with linux/alsa/jack, so better than with asio or coreaudio... Toine