[Voyage-linux] Re: QB9

[Gustin Johnson]

2011/5/11 jegunn <jeg at astro.princeton.edu>:
<snip>
> It works, seemingly flawlessly, on the same two systems with the April
> snapshot of Voyage, Alsa 1.0.24 and kernel 2.6.38-voyage. I just noticed
> that this is not a realtime kernel (?). Probably does not matter so much for
> asynchronous USB IF the buffer in the receiver is big enough.

For audio playback there is nothing to be gained by using a real time
kernel.  The real time kernel enables very low latency, but to achieve
that you usually do so at the cost of reduced buffer space.  You can
have large buffers with a real time kernel, it just simply does not
matter with the larger buffers.

You only need the lower latencies when playing virtual instruments
where some musicians can feel the latency between a key press and the
resulting sound.  For the purposes of mpd, having a real time kernel
is not an issue.

Hth,