Quoting "PAGANO,PATRICK RALPH" bigswift@ufl.edu:
So me as user is slower i presume? How much slower? Can anyone comment please
about 0.0%
Running at root on OSX won't give you 'real-time' anything. OSX does however have full real-time thread support which pd doesn't take advantage of right now. By putting the audio in a real-time thread, the thread would never be pre-empted as long as the audio process completed in a negotiated amount of time. For example, the app tells the task manager that the thread needs x amount of time to complete and the task manager will always allot that time slice every second for the thread provided it doesn't exceed the allotment. iTunes is an example of real-time threads for audio on osx.
here's a brief overview of this: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming...