Thanks for the responses.
I really wanted to see if it was worth it to go through with the CCRMA kernel install.
When you say just the kernel, do you mean the kernel and associated modules? If you switch to the CCRMA kernel, you will need to get the CCRMA ALSA drivers, and recompile any unique modules such as video wireless network.
By just the kernel, I meant I didn't want to install any of the packages. We are building a pretty heavy application with Pd+Gem. We already have a decently working system. But any extra performance we can get out of our current machines is beneficial. The graphics end is quite optimized - so now I'm focusing on audio. I was wondering what kind of benefit CCRMA could give. It seems from the emails that it's more of a convenience benefit than performance (ie, it's easier to download packages, run -rt without being root, etc.)... If I can run pd as root anyway, it's not going to benefit me that much right?
I guess though, that latency is a bit different from performance. It sounds like the latency can be cut down a bit by CCRMA. Performance however - ie, CPU load - is unaffected right? Julien, you said that operating at lower latencies you get clicks when CPU load >80% ...does this mean that in fact low latency might hinder a heavily loaded application?
Thanks again for your responses, -Mike