[Ardour-Users] Performance Testing question

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

Brett Clark wrote:
> I just finished compiling the latest stable kernel (2.6.31.1), but I had
> errors when I tried to add in Ingo’s RT patch so I left that out. 

that's probably not the best decision. check out the changelog for
.31.1, and unless the changes are security critical for you (which
shouldn't be the case on an audio production machine), go for .31 but
with rt patches applied. i've been running that kernel for a while with
very good results.

> Pentium 4 (2.4 Ghz).  I know, its old.
> 
> Memory: 700 Meg

that looks like a very cheap tuning opportunity - if the board is not
too weird, do yourself a favour and get 2 gigs... palpable improvement
at minimal cost.

> Onto my questions:
> 
> Is this a valid load test?  If not, what would you do to test the max
> your system can handle?  Im just looking for some type of benchmark that
> I can use for future upgrades, etc.

well, the only real hard limit that matters to me is how many tracks my
system can write at the same time - that's the max you can record live.

of course, being able to play many tracks with processing applied is
nice, but during post-production, you can always bounce tracks to save
cpu... so if you trade in some ease of use, you can do *a lot* even with
old hardware.

if you want to do lots of low-latency convolution, otoh, cpu gets eaten
at frightful rates... but that's a corner case for most people.



-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik

Audio and event engineer
Ambisonic surround recordings

http://stackingdwarves.net
+49 177 7937487