Real Time Experiments
Ok, so you have installed the real time kernel from Planet CCRMA but you feel that something is still compromising your low latency objectives. Well, this is a touchy subject and it does have many variables, but with some research and some useful tools, you will be able to have your Fedora machine running with acceptable latencies in no(real) time. No pun intended.
Tests
There are two tools that I use to further fine tune my Fedora system for real time audio use.
This first program was shown to me by raboof in the #opensourcemusicians channel on irc.freenode.net. As far as I know, he wrote this program without any help. This is the real time configuration quick scan. You can download it here: http://code.google.com/p/realtimeconfigquickscan/ [1]
Follow the instructions on the site or you can use my instructions. Notice that my instructions will run the command line version as opposed to the GUI version and that the GUI version is still experimental.
They are as follows
hg clone https://realtimeconfigquickscan.googlecode.com/hg/ realtimeconfigquickscan
simply navigate to the directory
cd realtimeconfigquickscan/
for the last part I choose to run the command line version as I have had better results with it.
type
./realTimeConfigQuickScan.pl
and hit enter.
Now, if the scan reports that something is not optimized, it will not only tell you, but it will give you a link to http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php?id=system_configuration [2] which has detailed information about the many checks that are performed with this program.
Granted, all of the tests in this scan may not apply to you and your hardware, but this is where the real fun begins. And we all know that real fun can only happen in real time.