mike@overtonedsp wrote:This is exactly the kind of thing I mean. I don't doubt it helps - but please, (as a thought experiment), consider that someone coming to Linux from another OS, and who sees the utility of a PC as a tool to make music, rather than as something they can endlessly take apart and reassemble in different ways for their own amusement, might assume that it is required - and at that point you / we've already lost them.
If you enjoy those tweaks, and you can convince yourself it is of quantifiable benefit, that's great. But if you use a stock Ubuntu LTS, with ALSA and a suitable DAW, it is, as I said, now subjectively at least as good as other OS as a platform for audio. It'll be just fine - and that's the message we need to get to potential users if Linux audio is going to appeal as a credible alternative. Which, right now it is ideally placed to be.
I am not sure I follow? Please, help me understand if I am missing something.
In which way CPU affinity might be mistaken as necessary tuning from my post above? I merely stated the possibility for this to be tuned if one wants to. I also doubt that a newbie might somehow mistake something advanced as CPU affinity with some kind of necessary tuning: when I was a beginner a single look at the Arch wiki was all I needed to understand I had to make some experience somewhere else first. But I guess other people are different. Finally, this thread does not come across to me as discussing generic tuning tips for beginners. Rather, it seems to just be reporting on the activity of the Linux kernel devs, so I gess more advanced topics can take place here without beginners interpreting anything posted here as generic tips.
Maybe this was not too clear:
CrocoDuck wrote:
EDIT: As far as I remember, I think I seen posts on some forum about using CPU affinity to pretty much dedicate one core to JACK, so to be a sort of "DSP highway". I think I did tried, found that it did not improve stuff for me, and pretty much decided to roll with the defaults: those defaults know how OS work much better than me, I think.
By "rolling with defaults" I essentially mean "I install my OS and do absolutely nothing about CPU affinity". As I said, I played with it, found no difference whatsoever on my system, and decided not to care. I guess I might have made it clearer: I am the skeptical one about this being useful. But you are right: only measurement and test can discern whether it helps or not. As far as I can tell, it can safely stay at the bottom end of "stuff to try" barrel.
Which brings me to:
tramp wrote:Do you really believe you could beet the scheduler?
This is what I mean by "those defaults know how OS work much better than me, I think.".