Hi Cyrille,
cyrille henry wrote:
Derek : do you know if this performance problem happend only with pd, or also with other software?
I didn't take a lot of time to benchmark different applications between the two platforms, although I did spend about 3 months (2 years ago) seeing how much stuff from the Linux Audio world was or could be ported to OSX. I use Ardour quite frequently without noticing a big loss of performance from Linux to OSX. But you have to keep in mind how big and bloated the Aqua/OSX desktop manager is!!! I'm sure it can account for a lot of overhead. But I still saw PD running a surprising amount slower than on Linux.
I use JACK almost always on OSX with PD (when I use it on OSX at all), and still the speed is quite poor. I'm fairly positive it has to do with whether Aqua handles the graphical interface or not. All those brushed chrome windows and colorful spinning widgets sure are expensive! Maybe do comparisons with "--nogui"? (Although for GEM patches this wouldn't help much would it?)
But in general, I've lost interest in using up valuable working/performing/recording time in debugging things. I keep a Linux partition on my laptop for PD live sets, sound editing in ReZound and heavy-duty Ardour/Jamin recording/mastering work these days, and do my day-to-day computer business under OS X. That seems like a working solution for me.
Sorry not be more helpful...
best, d.