Chuck performance/old machine

wurfholz · Joined: May 16, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Germany

Hi out there!

has anyone of you experience with ChucK on slow machines?

I´m trying to configure an old notebook to chuck around a little.
After i´ve managed compiling Chuck the machine seemed to be too slow.

Two of the otf_0*.ck examples work fine. Three shreds at the same time produce glitches and dirty noises and more produce silence.
Has anybody similar problems and solved it?
I tried the alsa- AND the jackd-Versions of chuck.

Thanx a lot
wurfholz

My Setup:
Hardware:
AMD K6II 350MHz
160 MB

System:
Debian Linux "ETCH"
Kernel: Standard 2.6-486 Kernel

Kassen · Posted: Wed May 16, 2007 7:09 am Post subject:

Hmmm, yes, that would be a bit slow.

You could look up the commands to the Virtual Machnie and increase "--bufsize" but I fear that won't help all *that* much if you already experience hickups after two otf files.

You can still render in non-real time but I fear you might need to bite the bullet and look into a new machine. On the bright side; computers that will deliver a LOT more performance are relatively affordable these days.

chuckles · Posted: Wed May 16, 2007 8:14 am Post subject: Old machines...

I notice that wurfholz is in Germany, so it may be different there, but I know that in the US, most medium and large size corporations literally discard PCs that are not at least Pentium 4 class. A notebook/laptop might be a different story...

wurfholz · Joined: May 16, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Germany

yes, i know! Wink

But it´s the only notebook i´ve got right now and i got it for free!
I´ve configured it for maximum speed (No useless deamons, no X-Servers etc.)
The only thing i could imagine to improve the power is to compile my own kernel, but i´ve never done that before....

maybe i should try a 2.4 Kernel... !??

Anyway thanks for the --bufsize hint. Will check that some time... Not right now! after two days oft trying to get chuck working properly i´ve got a little bit headache... Sad

wurfholz

nicolas3141 · Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 2:13 am Post subject:

I have run chuck on a 400MHz Win98 machine without any problems, but not attempting anything too heavy duty.

Cheers,
Nicolas

wurfholz · Joined: May 16, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Germany

interesting. How many Memory do you have?
Could it be, that Win offers a more performantic environment to chuck than Linux??

Kassen · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 3:39 am Post subject:

It could be that win-ChucK is a bit more optimised then the Linux one at the moment. I also think that the Windows one uses a slightly larger buffer by default and by default it runs at a lower bit-rate (44K v.s. 48K).

kijjaz · Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 11:30 am Post subject:

one thing i usually do while playing around with ChucK on a slower laptop machine..
(especially Linux.. which is usually slower than Windows if on the same machine)

is that to lower the Sample Rate used for real-time use.

22050 is okay..
and sometimes i actually play at 8000 .. lol.
anyway that'd depend on the soundcard you're using if it can play the specified sample rate.

wurfholz · Joined: May 16, 2007 Posts: 4 Location: Germany

Yes i´ve tryed this too, but then i got errors from my Jack-Demon, which seems to expect a specified sample rate.
But maybe i can configure this within Jack.
Does anyone have XP with that issue?

Thanks for the usefull hint!

wurfholz