On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika@yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]

>> Don't we want to compare straight to ALSA to pd to JACK to ALSA,
>> just with Pd running?  Having Pulse in the mix is good to measure as
>> well, but I'd like to get a handle on the "JACK adds no latency" statement
>> and comparing additionally with just Pd running through JACK will simplify
>> that.
>>
>> Also, it may be helpful to add: Pd through JACK, VLC using JACK backend
>> through Jack and compare it to the one using PulseAudio through JACK.

>If I'm not mistaken, it was your original idea to test a setup where
>all audio sources can be played together with Pd, i.e. Pd + PulseAudio
>+ JACK, and compare with Pd's current default routing (plain ALSA). So
>that's what I did. I'm now eager to know results from others before
>further delving into it.

Sorry, I'm talking about a few things at once.  One would be to test Pd by itself
with ALSA backend vs. Pd by itself with JACK backend.  That would provide
some data re: the page you linked to about latency.  (My suggestion about
Pd->JACK + VLC-with-jack-backend->JACK was meant to cover that case
and also compare to Pd->JACK +Pulse->JACK, but as you say we can delve
into that later.)

The other is: what's a "recommendable" setup for using Pd in GNU/Linux
with acceptable/controllable latency while still behaving with the rest of the
system.  Your Pd/Pulse/JACK measurements help to address that.

So [when I find my cord] I'll give results for:
Pd by itself directly to ALSA
Pd by itself through JACK (with qjackctl, and with ALSA as JACK's backend)
Pd to JACK + "other stuff" through Pulse to JACK

>> Another question: what are you using to play the Youtube video?  I know the
>> proprietary Flash plugin caused problems with Pulse at one point.

>Flash plugin indeed (no problem with Pulse on Xubuntu). Should we
>better find an HTML5 stream for the test?

Sure, if you have a link then that would be preferable-- I think HTML5 should have
better coverage than proprietary Flash (at least Debian doesn't ship with it, which I
like).  Or if you have VLC, opening a stream there-- it has a Pulse backend as well
as a JACK one so it'd be easy to test with both.  (But if you don't then HTML5 is
best.)

-Jonathan

>[...]

>Katja