recording wavs

[Net Llama!]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Squabsy wrote:
> In terms of RAM I currently have 256mb on 2 128 chips and a 512 swap How
> much more ram would you recommend ?

As much as the mobo & your budget can hold.  seriously.

> I seem to remember that someone advised that max swap should be double
> your ram. I think the recordings I have made get more glichy once the ram
> run's out and the SWAP kicks in.

that was true for 2.2.x kernels.  its not really true for 2.4.x kernels.
You can add additional swap files, which would be a decent short term
workaround, although performance will continue to suck badly.  I wouldn't
recommend resizing a swap partition, unless you feel _very_ confortable
with resizing partitions under linux.  If you do it wrong, you risk hosing
your entire system.

> Recording wavs is really the only major problem I'm having with Linux so
> I don't want to spend too much. I suppose I could replace one of the
> 128's with a 256 for about £30 that would take me up to 384.

I doubt that's going to help much.  RAM is dirt cheap.  Either max it out,
or don't bother at all.

> My objective is (still) a 30 min 16bit stereo wav at 44100hz
>
> Are there no progs that can write direct to disk for linux then ?

i doubt it.  its buffering to memory (RAM + swap) for performance reasons.
Writing straight to disk will most likely kill performance worse than what
you're already experiencing.  Of course not running KDE and/or Gnome will
certainly free up a ton more RAM.  XFCE (xfce.org) might be a good choice
for an alternative window mamanger.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman				netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo		     http://netllama.ipfox.com