thanks to helped me with my previous post (running FIFO as root), i've fixed both problems listed, which were related funnily enough. the FIFO problem was solved by editing /etc/security/limits.conf (thanks Vegard).<br><br>
anyway, i've come across a solution (that while may not be ideal, still works), with catching some xruns. i know my system can handle a fairly heavy load during recording, but the disk transfers do create some xruns that can be cause at the end of recording, or opening / importing. unfortunately this also affects mixing down. on the
<a href="http://ardour.org">ardour.org</a> forums, paul mentioned that running a kernel with RT doesn't affect the scheduling of ardour.<br><br>this lead me to realise that while jack has abstracted all audio for playback and recording (that is, ardour does not talk to a soundcard directly, ever), jack doesn't abstract the loading or saving of the audio files themselves. so in that case, ardour talks to the VFS, which in turn talks to the kernel or whatever and does the disk transfers. the problem is, if for whatever reason the drivers don't run particularily well or you have old archaic disks but have fast memory, recording (and possibly playback) will be a breeze, but mixdown (if jack is set to realtime) can cause alot of xruns.
<br><br>my way around this was to compile jack with my ramfs/shmfs to a fairly common place - "/media/songs_working", and then mixdown everything to here first. this ignores disk transfers completely, and my experience (so far) has been no xruns, where there were previously lots with an otherwise identical setup. compiling a RT thus will also help with some playback xruns, as while it might not change anything with the audio handling layer, it might schedule disk transfers better (which again so far has been my experience).
<br><br>the other benefit of this, is often i find myself having to mixdown a number of times to get the file i need (ie, master tracks weren't selected, connections went directly to hardware instead of ardour master etc); doing it this way writes directly to memory so it saves much quicker (which is great if you have alot of effects or hi resolution), and then previews quicker (in xmms etc).
<br><br>anyway, that was long winded, but i thought it might be useful to some...<br>