[PlanetCCRMA] FC7+CCRMA+Toshiba_Laptop xruns problem

[Patrick Ladam]

Hi all,
Two weeks now I try turning my laptop into the next sound studio on earth...no 
way.
Here is the story:
Laptop Toshiba Satellite A100-768. Sound card hda-intel, ALC861 (not the best, 
I know...).
Uname -a gives:
2.6.22.6-1.rt9.3.fc7.ccrmart #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Tue Sep 4 18:53:14 EDT 2007 
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
- Freshly installed Fedora 7 + CCRMA (core+a few softs). Installations went 
smoothly, got the rt-kernel up with RTIRQ showing up at boot.

- Best performances I could get out of Jackd were:
In Qjackctl setup window, latency is 92,9 msec. What I get in the Qjackctl 
messages window is a lot of xruns (thought they seem of a good value to me, 
around 0.05 ms):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10:24:15.197 jackd -R -P89 -p128 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p2048 -n2
10:24:15.198 JACK was started with PID=3584 (0xe00).
jackd 0.103.0
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
SSE2 detected
apparent rate = 44100
creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|2048|2|44100|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:0
configuring for 44100Hz, period = 2048 frames, buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 16bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.044 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.055 msecs
10:24:17.325 Server configuration saved to "/home/pl/.jackdrc".
10:24:17.326 Statistics reset.
10:24:17.615 Client activated.
10:24:17.616 Audio connection change.
10:24:17.620 Audio connection graph change.
JACK tmpdir identified as [/dev/shm]
SSE2 detected
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.051 msecs
10:24:17.697 XRUN callback (1).
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.043 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.043 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.044 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.023 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.041 msecs
10:24:19.626 XRUN callback (5 skipped).
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.042 msecs
**** alsa_pcm: xrun of at least 0.044 msecs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- If I run hydrogen 0.9.3-1 with jackd as audio pilote, xruns are really 
terrible (lot of interrupts). 
- If I run hydrogen with Alsa as audio pilote, it is almost OK but still I 
have xruns with the following message:
[ERROR]     AlsaAudioDriver     [alsaAudioDriver_processCaller] XRUN
[ERROR]     AlsaAudioDriver     [alsaAudioDriver_processCaller] XRUN
xruns with alsa doesn't sound good huuu?

- Here is my /proc/interrupts:
           CPU0       CPU1
  0:     813538         23   IO-APIC-edge      timer
  1:       5156          0   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
  8:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
  9:       1104          2   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
 12:       4956          0   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
 14:      38786          0   IO-APIC-edge      libata
 15:       7640          0   IO-APIC-edge      libata
 16:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb4
 17:          1          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ohci1394
 18:      30160          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   yenta, uhci_hcd:usb3, 
sdhci:slot0, tifm_7xx1
 19:          2          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb1, ehci_hcd:usb5
 20:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb2
 21:         74      28744   IO-APIC-fasteoi   eth0
 22:      17838          2   IO-APIC-fasteoi   HDA Intel
NMI:          0          0
LOC:     370628     747136
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

- I tried to improve things playing on latency_timer (which is 0!!) for my 
sound card with chrt but bus 00:* seems locked, I can't change the 
latency_timer value while chrt works on other buses (01:* and others).  The 
Bios I have does not allow to change PCI buses...
lspci -v gives:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition 
Audio Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Unknown device ff10
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
        Memory at dc400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ 
Queue=0/0 Enable-
        Capabilities: [70] Express Unknown type IRQ 0
        Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [130] Unknown (5)

I tried the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.22 workaround thought I am not sure it is 
still necessary for kernel 2.6.22, but anyway it did not work (libraries were 
not found anymore and simple commands did not work).
To sum up, I suspect I have a problem with alsa first plus some jack tuning to 
do thought after reading around a lot I can't seem to track my problem 
precisely. The fact I can't change the latency_timer on bus 00 is no good 
sign either...

If someone can help I'd really appreciate, I have been as far as I could by 
myself but here I'm stuck and dying to plug my guitar in with ardour...

Bye all