[PlanetCCRMA] Experiences with new kernel + FC4 & FC5

[Tracey Hytry]

Sorry for getting to the list a bit late on this.

I had a chance to check out the newest rrt kernels on both FC4 and FC5 here.

I haven't gotten much of a chance to test audio things on FC5 yet, though the kernel itself is very stable on FC5.

I did a fair amount of testing the newest one on FC4 and am happy to report that it works fine here.  I can get 1/mSec latency if I push it, but some apps just aren't designed for it.  I usually use a 1.45ms(qjackctl) or a 2.9ms latency setting with the realtime kernel, and twice that with the preempt kernel that Fernando also included.  I can also get jack to run real time with the stock fedora 2.6.16 kernel if I boost the latency setting up by a factor of two or four again.  This is all on an old athlon running at 1.7GHz on an old asus/via motherboard.  I use Fernando's PAM and make sure it's set properly, along with all the other low latency tunings.

I am also very happy and excited by the fact that the 2.6.16 series now work with our old MOTU midi switcher again.  This is the snd_mtpav driver that connects to the externel rack piece via the parallel port.  Many thanks to the folks who fixed the driver so it will work with the real time preemtable kernels.  I'm getting some great sounds out of a combination of aeolus and whysynth and an external midi keyboard.  Also please pass on the thanks to Ingo for the great work on the real time kernel patches.  Also thanks for the hard work by the kernel developers and the alsa folks for getting things together so well.

If I have the time and get a chance to also install FC5 on the music machine I'll try to post the results here too(a hint on how to get the CCRMA stuff installed on FC5:  after doing the "yum update" thing;  open "yumex", sellect the "repos" and turn off the "fedora extras"(leave the ccrma-extras on), click on the "install" from the left side and then press the upper distro(or repo)(I'm doing this from memory), wait for it to sort it out, scroll down to the planetccrma stuff and install what you want:).

Tracey.