Silent pc (Re: [ardour-users] Session export ?

[gerard van dongen]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:15:36 -0800, Matthew Sewell  
<matthewsewell at ojai.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 12:17, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> > That sounds fine. Stay away from reiserfs for your audio disk though.  
>> ext3
>> > of XFS is better for big files like audio files.
>
> Dammit!  How come I can never get consistent advice on this subject?  I
> put reiserfs on that drive because I read that it performs better for
> audio work.  What do you suggest then?  Vfat or ext3?
>

I would go for ext3, I just got a new disk and I am trying out XFS.
But I am only paraphrasing what I hear on #ardour on IRC
The impression I got is that reiserFS is optimized for lots of small  
files, and this somehow interferes with audio work.
Mainly I think the problems occur when disks are getting full.


> I have a problem where, after about 14 tracks or so, the disk can't keep
> up while recording and I get an error message to that effect from
> Ardour...then the track is ruined and the vocalist curses my mother.  I
> really have to solve this.  My drives test (after hdparm tweaks) around
> 40 mB/S (320 Mb/s).
>

14 tracks  = 48000 * 4 * 14 = 2.6 mB/s, So raw speed is not a problem.
One of the latest fixes in ardour is that the drive buffering can be  
adjusted in your .ardour/ardour.rc

  <Option name="track-buffer-seconds" value="3.000000"/>

Change this to a higher value.
Disk fragmentation can also cause problems. If you have to write different  
tracks in locations that are physically far appart on the disk, you create  
a lot of extra seek time.

If you get a new disk, get one with a low seektime. and a big buffer.
Raw speed is less important nowadays, as all disks are fast enough for 3-5  
MB/s.

Gerard