* Linonut peremptorily fired off this memo:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/31/microsoft.technology
The original is even funnier:
The following post comes from my colleague Steve Ball, Senior Program
Manager for Sound in Windows Vista, and continues his team's on-going
series on how Windows Vista treats various forms of audio.
Part I: Why does my Windows sound sometimes "glitch?"
Windows is a rich and complex OS designed for multi-tasking users
whose tasks must share access to scarce system hardware and
resources.
[ What, like RAM and CPU cycles! ??? ]
. . .
So why do many $2000 PCs occasionally glitch while playing back
music? The quick answer is this: Windows is not a single-function
device like a CD player.
[ What an admission by Microsoft, that their "latest and greatest" OS
causes problems on $2000 worth of hardware. Incredible. ]
A slightly longer answer goes like this: even an average Windows
machine today is commonly used simultaneously as a media player, word
processor, presentation projector, spreadsheet number cruncher,
authoring tool, photo editor, media server, video recorder, music
composition tool, communications device, search engine, virus
detector, data compressor and decompressor, and backup manager.
[ I know of no person who is capable of simultaneously operating a word
processor, presentation, spreadsheet, authoring tool, photo editor, and
music composition tool. Resident in memory, sure. Consuming CPU
cycles? No. ]
. . .
I snipped the rest of this excuse-making and sugar-coating. Time for
the antidote:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9892
Portable Hard Disk Recorder How-To
December 1st, 2007 by Dan Sawyer in * HOWTOs
Use an old laptop to build a multitrack hard disk recorder.
. . .
Fortunately, I have an old laptop lying around, and Linux\u2014unlike
some other popular operating systems I could name\u2014has real-time
hardware preemption, which is essential if one wants to build a hard
disk recorder. A laptop, of course, will not accept PCI or PCI
Express cards, so the choice of Pro Audio interfaces is limited to
the external\u2014something that can plug in either to the CardBus
slot or the USB or FireWire port.
. . .
After plugging this interface in to my laptop and configuring it
properly, I have a multitrack hard disk recorder that can
simultaneously record 24 tracks at a maximum sample rate of 96KHz,
well above the maximum available sample rate on far more expensive
commercial HDRs, with more available input tracks.
Of course, you have to build your Linux kernel with real-time support.
But you can do that with Windows Vista or XP, too, right?
--
Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for
regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
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