After working with linux audio on a 7 year old P4, I’ve finally assembled the resources to build a new 64 bit box using an Intel Core 2 Duo as a base. I’ve always compiled my own sources and never had any trouble, but still being rather new to 64 bit, I’m finding a lot trouble with compiling certain programs, Jack won’t even run anymore, included along with other feelings of desparity and hopelessness.
I’ve been a long user of the Fedora distros and on my 32 bit Fedora 7 box, I got ardour compiled and running smooth in no time. However, I thought I’d take this time to ask people their advice on stable x86_64 distros, and any advice they can give to a newcomer transitioning from 32 bit to 64 bit. And, just out of curiosity, what distros are the developers using?
I’ll leave this short for now, but can post any output messages for troubleshooting if needed.
I have determined the source of all my grief was entirely my intel-hda on-board card. I knew it wasn’t up to par with better interfaces, but I didn’t imagine it was actually THAT bad. Well, it is. I’d rip it out of my motherboard if it unfortunately wasn’t part of my ICH8 southbridge…
I thought it would hold me off until I bought a better interface. Instead I put the Audigy 2 from my old box in and it’s been smooth sailing since. Even on the lowest latency settings it could handle, I haven’t had an xrun since! Now I can finally get some work done!
As soon as I can put down the cash for it, I’m picking up a Mackie Control and a Digiface. Thanks again to Paul and all the developers for an amazing product!
I apologize, think I was a little off topic and beating a dead horse with the distro question, but am still interested in anybody’s ideas or experience in optimizing for using Ardour for in 64-bit.
Fiddling around with PKG_CONFIG_PATH and jack’s configure settings, I’ve at least got things up and running but completely unacceptable performance for Ardour use. However, I’m thinking the largest bottleneck right now is my soundcard (onboard intel-hda), which I’m stuck with until I can get a better solution.
Ardour is already “optimized” for x86_64. its primary developer (me) works on a dual Opteron system used in 64 bit mode.
I don’t know what issues you are facing, but JACK and Ardour are just as stable on my x86_64 system as any of my 32 bit ones.
The intel HDA “standard” for audio interfaces is a terrible piece of work, mostly because its not actually much of a standard at all. How well a given “HDA” interface works depends on a lot of different things - there are many different implementations. If audio is something you take seriously, in terms of recording, editing and mixing, get a better audio interface. The one you have is aimed at gamers and people who think that 5.1 surround sound means that they have a high end home theater system.
Just thought I’d throw this out as well, are there better versions of GCC than others (that Joe user would notice after compiling)? For example, making more/less stable code or better/worse at optimizing. Reading around, it seems a lot of work is put into SSE optimizing in jack and ardour. I also believe I read the GCC 4.1 series is not so keen on such things as vector optimizations and such, so would it be worth using a different version (as 4.1 is the only compiler on Fedora 7. a compat 3.4.6 was nice on FC6 for some programs that weren’t quite 4* ready), or in the end is it all just too much trouble for only a small amount of gain?