Thanks to everyone for their help with the MIDI sluggishness problem. I've got it sorted out now. The deal is, when I tried running with the -noaudio option, I didn't think to _also_ go into the audio settings box and set the audio latency to 1ms. I mean, why should that setting matter, if you're not using audio? But it does matter, apparentlybecause (as someone pointed out up-thread) Pd tries to keep MIDI and audio in sync by running them with the same buffer delay.
When I run with -noaudio and then go into the audio settings box and dial down to a 1ms buffer, Pd is able to pass MIDI through in 1ms. Why the user should have to jump through these hoops, I'm not quite sure. Maybe Miller knows best.
Next question: How do I get Pd to save my preferences -- MIDI ports, audio buffer size, and (if possible) running with -noaudio? And no, I don't mean by launching it with a bunch of command line flags. I mean, double-click on the icon and it launches with my preferences intact. Suggestions?
--Jim Aikin