Re: [fluid-dev] Major degradation in sound quality & cpu usage going from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10

[Aere Greenway]

David:

On looking further, the problem with memory is the fault of the KDE desktop version of Ubuntu (Kubuntu).  Even with the "Low-Fat" options, running just Evolution Mail and FireFox, it is using nearly half of my 1 gigabyte of memory, and more than half of the processor.  

This clearly isn't going to work, even though it didn't get any under-runs.  

Running your fix is the first time I have tried Kubuntu since 9.10, and it appears to collected a lot of fat since then.  

I think I will look more seriously at Xubuntu, which I have on a 450 megahertz, 384 Megabyte RAM machine.  It won't run Qsynth on that machine (except for maybe one part only), but it works fine with a Soundblaster card, or an external synthesizer.  

And best of all, it runs fast and lean on more capable machines, where Qsynth works great.  At least it doesn't have the Unity desktop.  Its biggest negative is how hard it is to create a desktop icon/launcher.  

- Aere


On Tue, 2011-11-15 at 06:04 +0100, David Henningsson wrote:
> On 11/15/2011 05:17 AM, Aere Greenway wrote:
> > David:
> >
> > I installed the version of Fluidsynth in your PPA, and found that it
> > definitely fixes the problem. Hooraaay!
>
> Since Pedro also had a problem with this, it might make sense to release 
> a 1.1.6 version with this bug fixed, to make sure it reaches 12.04.
>
> > I had some difficulty testing it because (I think) this development
> > version uses so much memory, that I couldn't run it on my 1 gigibyte RAM
> > machine without having it the only thing running, and not loading the
> > soundfont into the emu10k1's.
>
> This is not expected. Did you run any further testing on this? Are you 
> sure it was FluidSynth taking up all the memory, and nothing else? Did 
> you run top / gnome-system-monitor to verify? What sizes are your 
> soundfont files?
>
> Or did you actually have some symptom (what symptom?) and just assumed 
> it was due to lack of memory?
>
> > It was also an unpleasant surprise to find
> > that it took out the special configuration necessary for running JACK,
> > but I was able to put that back in manually, after uttering some choice
> > expletives...
>
> Ehh...I have a hard time believing that this could be FluidSynth's fault.
>
> > I highly recommend that this particular fix be included in the Ubuntu
> > 11.10 release, due to the severe degradation in performance and sound
> > quality of Fluidsynth that is in that release, without the fix.
>
> This fix is only relevant for low-polyphony settings, so it does not 
> affect most people (who I assume never run into lack of polyphony). That 
> said, I don't mind you putting effort into trying to do so - it's a good 
> fix. The process for trying to do so is here: 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates
>
> // David

-- 

Sincerely,
Aere