Ubuntu Desires Lower Audio Latency For Gaming

[RealNC]

no, you would be wrong. H/W mixing is very useful ~ you just aren't someone that needs it. You would have a completely different outlook, if you wanted/needed things like zero-latency monitoring, or things like being able to control the ratio of the mix vs. monitoring.

to claim HW mixing is an answer to crappy SW mixers is, welll..... moronic. Your better off saying that HW mixing just ins't something you need for your particular usage, instead of saying it's useless (considering the vast majority of audio interfaces - ie: proaudio AD/DA convertors boast HW mixing - including every single interface i've purchased over the last decade).

Keep in mind that we're talking about playing video games, watching videos and listening to MP3s here. HW mixing is certainly not required for that.

[JS987]

H/W mixing is very useful

Is there some sound card with
- HW mixing
- headphone amp
- replacable op-amps
- supported by Linux
- price less than $200
?

[ninez]

The only thing HW mixing is an answer to is crappy SW mixers.

no, you would be wrong. H/W mixing is very useful ~ you just aren't someone that needs it. You would have a completely different outlook, if you wanted/needed things like zero-latency monitoring, or things like being able to control the ratio of the mix vs. monitoring.

to claim HW mixing is an answer to crappy SW mixers is, welll..... moronic. Your better off saying that HW mixing just ins't something you need for your particular usage, instead of saying it's useless (considering the vast majority of audio interfaces - ie: proaudio AD/DA convertors boast HW mixing - including every single interface i've purchased over the last decade).

cheerz

[RealNC]

no, you certainly are again in stupid mode.

Hardware mixing is the answer. It is not ALSA's or PA's fault if YOU choose to buy SHIT. That's it. No excuses. You bought crap and now you are whining around.



except that ALSA were meant to have plugins from the start. dmix was introduced because people are buying crap and then complain.

See RealNC as an example.

Yeah sure. A Xonar D1 is crap while a Creative Recon3D is so l33t. Are you insane?

The only thing HW mixing is an answer to is crappy SW mixers.

[Bestia]

And I never had any audio stuttering with PulseAudio, and I hardly have the worlds most powerful setup.

I changed the audio system to OSSv4.2 because of the audio stuttering with PulseAudio. I have Dual Core 4400+ 64 bit Athlon so it's much more powerful then Sempron and PA in my use case gives horrible results. Also PulseAudio on Ubuntu already have the high priority.

I'm regularly compiling new versions of Wine on Ubuntu and I have Chrome opened with many tabs and gmusicbrowser playing music. The processor cores are at 100% usage all the time through compilation and most of the RAM is in use. In this case audio stutters with PA so badly that I can't stand it, while when OSSv4.2 is in use I get zero stutters and audio is crystal clear. That's why I always remove ALSA and PA from Ubuntu (unfortunately I can't purge all of the PA).

[unix_epoch]

Is there a "defaults.pcm.dmix.*" option for this? I'd like to try it and see whether audio skipping becomes a problem with smaller buffers.

It's the period_size and buffer_size parameters on the slave PCM. Some examples on this page: http://alsa.opensrc.org/Dmix. Official docs here: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind.../Asoundrc#dmix and here: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc...m_plugins_dmix

[energyman]

Hardware mixing doesn't work. Why? Because my hardware doesn't do mixing. So how can it work?

Yeah, I'm joking. Point is, the hw mixing argument is just an excuse for shitty sw mixing implementations. In the age of dual core CPUs being the low end, not being able to do proper audio mixing sounds more like a bad joke to me.

no, you certainly are again in stupid mode.

Hardware mixing is the answer. It is not ALSA's or PA's fault if YOU choose to buy SHIT. That's it. No excuses. You bought crap and now you are whining around.

I don't regard dmix as part of core ALSA because it is a plugin. And it was developed as an afterthought hack due to the problems posed by pure ALSA.

except that ALSA were meant to have plugins from the start. dmix was introduced because people are buying crap and then complain.

See RealNC as an example.

[unix_epoch]

Can you really tell the latency between the pianist triggering the string and you hearing it?

YES, if you are the pianist.

[Ancurio]

Except that you would be wrong (in part). ALSA has *both* user-space and kernel side code. PA replaces ALSA's user-side (when in use) ie: things like dmix. and pa uses it's adapters to then handle it... But when using just ALSA - you will be using it's userspace components, instead of PA... You obviously don't really understand linux' sound systems/plumbing if you can make such a silly comment.

And regardless, my comparsion of zita-ajbridge/ALSA(user-space) vs. alsa_in/out/Pulseaudio in terms of stuttering, still stands.

I don't regard dmix as part of core ALSA because it is a plugin. And it was developed as an afterthought hack due to the problems posed by pure ALSA.

[Redshirt001]

to be more specific , this is only the fact for non hw mixing cards ...which sadly seem to be very popular nowadays ..i love my hw mixing soundblaster

Well the fact is that most of us are using onboard sound these days, which means that it's not going to have hw mixing. I missed my soundblaster when it died too, until pulseaudio came along.