Linux: Set Number Of Periods For ALSA

recent threads, and my recent experience with my new laptop, have shown that, expecially crappy soundcards (i.e.: the majority of built-in cards), need ALSA periods setting to be greater than 2 in order for Renoise to run smoothly.

Since you cannot set this option in Edit => Preferences => Audio, the user is forced to open ALSA via JACK, since JACK allows you to set periods number. This is particularly annoying for 64bit users which would have hard time installing and mantaining JACK under their system.

Also, this can give a very bad first-impression to potential new Linux users, because the number of crackles you get, believe me, is really discouraging.

The best solution would be to give the ability to set periods in the preferences. Maybe it could be a good idea to set it at 3 by default on the next build and let us test if both my laptop and all our desktop systems run fine with this configuration.

Well, Jack also uses a default num periods of 2, doesn’t it? If thats true, chances are high that they do this for a good reason, aka if we set the default periods to 3, it will crackle / lag on other systems?

Taktik, in my own experience, increasing the number of default periods can’t make anything crackle more since you’re actually just increasing the buffer size.

It’s increasing latency though, and that may be the reason it’s fixed to 2 in qjackctl.

I may note that i had exactly the same problem with EnergyXT2 under linux, and that fixing periods to 3 fixed the problem.

I tested the system with periods : 3 on both my edirol FA-66 (thru freebob tho) and on my Novation X-station, and it worked flawlessly

If you’re reluctant to fix it to 3 by default, maybe you can add a script at Renoise first start, that sets it to three if the sound card is hda-intel, since the problem seems to be related only to theses chips.

Anyway the option to set periods at least is a must have imo.

Btw thanks to you and all renoise devs for an amazing piece of software ;) Buying it as soon as next payday comes !

EDIT : Sry, you don’t care about Edirol FA-66 since it’s not alsa :o

Thanks. If thats really the case, the we should indeed make the number of periods adjustable and set it to 3 by default…