[PlanetCCRMA] Finally - a stable low-latency setup with latest rt-kernel and ffado

[Filip Hoško]

Hello everybody,

I just wanted to report, that after couple of years of trying and
tweaking (and waiting, for sure), I was finally able to find a linux
setup that will actually perform ok with my M-Audio ProFire 610. I'm
able to get really low latencies, under 10ms (about 5ms in Ardour)
with NO XRUNS at all. This is for the first time I got such a
performance from any linux distro/setup.

Just in case anybody would be interested, my actual setup is as follows:

PC: laptop Dell Latitude E6400
Audio device: M-Audio ProFire 610 (firewire)
FW adapter: ESYS EX-6610E express card adapter with Texas Instruments
XIO2200A fw chip (the build-in fw adapter in this laptop is Ricoh and
it doesn't work much, so you need external fw adapter with a nice TI
chip - fortunately the bridge in this laptop is Intel, not Ricoh, so
it works well)
OS: Fedora 15 64-bit
Kernel: 3.0.9-1.rt25.1.fc15.ccrma.x86_64.rt (latest rt)
FFADO version: ffado-2.1.0-0.3.20110426.svn1983.fc15 (x86_64) (latest
from the repos)
JACK: 1.9.7-2.fc15 (x86_64) (from the repos)

So this is my system and I'm hoping I'll preserve it in a working
condition. BTW, is there a possibility to freeze this config, so to
prevent it from becoming unstable/non-functional after an upgrade? Can
it be done with YUM, so I can for example freeze the rt-kernel version
and ffado-version (and maybe jack too)? Would it be ok to use this
rt-kernel for a longer time and not to upgrade it (considering I will
upgrade others apps and parts of the system)?

Thanks,

Filip