To begin, I’m not a recording or computer guru by any stretch of the imagination but I’m trying to configure my computer as best for “My computer” ;). I’ve been reading alot on these, and other, forums about limits.conf, cpu performance, and killing pulseaudio. I’ve read so much my head is swimming and I just need someone,if possible, to tell me what I need to set my computer/software to have it at its peak performance. I bought this computer as mainly for recording.
I have AMD Phenom™ II X4 955 Processor, 12Gigs memory, Western Digital 250Gig hd, Asus motherboard(ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX), running ubuntustudio 11.04 with 3.0.0-13-lowlatency kernel. When I record I use a USB 2.0 microphone cable straight to my computer with a SM58 mick- http://www.amazon.com/LightSnake-STUSBXLR10-USB-Microphone-cable/dp/B000H7O9ZI. I know this is not the “ideal” way to record, but it records o.k.(I’m on a tight,tight budget so it’s what I have, for now). I mainly just record guitar or vocals from my amp into the mic to the computer. The sound is not bad at all. I just want to get the best performance as possible with this set up. What I’m running into are x-runs, like every 8sec or so. I have tried all sorts of different settings ex.frames/periods 128-1024(thru), sample rate -48k- 32k, periods/buffer 2-4. Of course, some of the higher settings(ALOT, more latency,upwards of 84ms). I record, while listening to the recording(duplex, I guess), but if the latency is off, it doesn’t work well. Plus, I have x-runs.
I’ve read that I should try and kill pulseaudio before I run jack. I guess because two audio servers trying to run my give x-runs(again, I’m not a guru) My settings for limits.conf(pulseaudio) I have:
; autospawn = no
; daemon-binary = /usr/bin/pulseaudio
; extra-arguments = --log-target=syslog
; cookie-file =
; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB
When I try and kill pulseaudio(pulseaudio -k) it comes back immediately. I’ll play aqualung,after I kill pulse, and it shows Output: pulseaudio.Do I need to kill Pulseaudio? How can I really kill it?
I’m not sure about “user groups” settings. I’m going to sys>adm>users/groups>manage groups and then it lists"groups available on this system". My name(group member) is checked for audio,admin,pulse,pulse-access,my name(russell),sudo. I’m guessing this is what is meant for being in “user/groups”.
I know this is alot of info on one fail swoop, but I’m just at a loss. I think this computer can handle what I’m throwing at it. I guess… If anyone thinks not, please let me know and I’ll try a different route. I don’t know what that would be ;), but I’d figure something.
I’ve also thought about using 64 studio OS or AV linux for this computer. What are some thoughts on that?
Again, thanks for any help.