Sound slows on heavy I/O

[Craig Reyenga]

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To: FreeBSD-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
From: Craig M. Reyenga <craig>
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>Submitter-Id:  current-users
>Originator:    Craig M. R.
>Organization:  My Room
>Confidential:  no <FreeBSD PRs are public data>
>Synopsis:      Sound slows on heavy I/O
>Severity:      serious
>Priority:      medium
>Category:      kern
>Class:         sw-bug
>Release:       FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT i386
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD cesspool 5.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #1: Sat Apr 12
18:47:02


        <machine, os, target, libraries (multiple lines)>
>Description:
        During heavy I/O, sound playback slows to approximately 0.5X-0.8X
        original speed. This has been reported by many users with hardware
        of various capabilities, from original Pentiums to Dual Athlon XP
        systems, and appears to be independant of sound hardware as well.
        It is also independant of the I/O system in use, as both SCSI and
        ATA disk/optical devices will cause this to happen.
>How-To-Repeat:
        Play your favourite song with your favourite audio player, while
        burning a CD, unzipping an archive, or anything that will cause
        heavy I/O.
>Fix:

        Some people can get away by disabling daemons like esound, others
        are not so lucky. Some have guessed that it is a problem with
        interrupts in the kernel.