1 second latency with sound in KDE?

[lugoteehalt]

Could anyone tell me if it is natural for the sound to lag the event, say minimising a window, in KDE using the arts sound server? The lag is one second, this seems grotesquely long surely?:confused:

[cybertron]

It does seem excessively long, but TBH I've never heard anything good about the ARTS and ESD soundservers so it's possible that they just suck that badly. Personally I always disable them as one of the first things I do after installation.

Also, KDE may be slow sending the sound itself. It might be waiting until the minimize has finished before actually playing the sound and that could feel like a significant lag itself.

Just speculation of course, but that's about all I can offer since like I said I don't use ARTS.

[lugoteehalt]

Thanks. Disable arts with: kde control -> sound & something -> click button at top and it all greys out. Is what I did.

Assume this correct although arts sometimes still switches on automatically. Perhaps just make its executable non-execute, who can tell?

[cybertron]

So did that fix the lag?

Assume this correct although arts sometimes still switches on automatically. Perhaps just make its executable non-execute, who can tell?
Hmm, never had that problem myself. I suppose there might be something else in KDE that's triggering it, but that would be a bug if it's disabled in the control panel. This isn't KDE 4 by any chance is it?;)

Note: I love KDE 4, but it's been really buggy for me.

[lugoteehalt]

So did that fix the lag?Sorry to be thick but because the sound is disabled there are no desktop bleaking glasses and so on. So don't know. There's a big lag, but not one second, with alsa on TV, but have got round this by wireing the TV card directly to the sound card. (This did give distortion but fixed this by lowering the levels in the mixer).

Hmm, never had that problem myself. I suppose there might be something else in KDE that's triggering it, but that would be a bug if it's disabled in the control panel. This isn't KDE 4 by any chance is it?;)

Note: I love KDE 4, but it's been really buggy for me.

It's the KDE in Debian Lenny 5.

kde-core (>= 5:47)
the K Desktop Environment core modules

dep: kdeaccessibility (>= 4:3.5.5)
accessibility packages from the official KDE release

dep: kdeaddons (>= 4:3.5.5)
add-on plugins and applets provided with KDE

dep: kdeadmin (>= 4:3.5.5)
system administration tools from the official KDE release

dep: kdeartwork (>= 4:3.5.5)
themes, styles and more from the official KDE release

dep: kdeedu (>= 4:3.5.5)
educational apps from the official KDE release

dep: kdegames (>= 4:3.5.5)
games from the official KDE release

dep: kdegraphics (>= 4:3.5.5)
graphics apps from the official KDE release

dep: kdemultimedia (>= 4:3.5.5)
multimedia apps from the official KDE release

dep: kdenetwork (>= 4:3.5.5)
network-related apps from the official KDE release

dep: kdepim (>= 4:3.5.5)
Personal Information Management apps from the official KDE release

dep: kdetoys (>= 4:3.5.5)
toys from the official KDE release

dep: kdeutils (>= 4:3.5.5)


The thing is: if it's correct to say that the grotesque 1 second latency problem is comming from ARTS then I sort of better know where I stand with latency problems in general, because I tend to get these.

[cybertron]

Ah, didn't think about that. I guess that would disable all of the KDE sounds.

TV cards can be a bit tricky about that too, so that's not necessarily an indication of wider problems with sound. If you can live without KDE sounds, disabling ARTS will probably largely eliminate your latency problems. I guess time will tell though.

[lugoteehalt]

Yes, that seems right. Thanks.

[lugoteehalt]

Found out what was wrong. Rather embarassing but I get the impression other people have difficulty finding this too.

KDE Control Panel -> sound + something -> fiddle about till you find a slider that does the delay and set it to smallest value. Then problem solved.:o