Sound Problems

[Jonathan Hutchins]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Clinton" <clintonj at umkc.edu>

> | So you know it's not really the sound system, it's the bloated,
> | multilayered, inefficient XWindows system that's killing your CPU
cycles.

> Total FUD. XWindows is supprisingly efficient.

Considering the amount of crud in it, sure, like an 747 is surprizingly
efficient.

There are a number of commercial GUI shells for *NIX that capitalize on this
shortcoming.  Even stripped and recompiled, XWindows is a dog.

> occuring on your system is that the video driver that you have loaded for
> XFree86 isn't accellerated therefore the CPU must perform all of the
redrawing.

Well, I'm citing perfomance hits under MS Windows, but as a matter of fact I
think my video driver in Linux is optimized for the card, and accelerated
(Voodoo Banshee, if you want to look it up), and I too get sound artifacts
when I'm working while listening.  Not too bad, but not as good as under MS
Windows.  I have not taken any agressive tuning steps - I have real work to
do.

> Furthermore, changing window managers (Gnome, KDE, or whatever)will have
no
> affect on this problem.

Gnome and KDE are "desktop environments".  Gnome runs on the Enlightenment
window manager.  Moving to a lighter window manager and/or turning off some
of the GUI effects will have performance impact for people running ordinary
(as opposed to state-of-the-art) hardware.  Less CPU load = more available
to process audio.