you are correct: i only recently upgraded from ubuntustudio ( real time kernel and xfce desktop) to ubuntu 20.10 (and i have win10). so i can say that with alsa i can do a little bit more than on win10. i only managed to configure jack fairly recently and hadnāt really tried anything big yet. i should.
but since i cant upgrade anything in my laptop except to ssd i was wandering if it might help, even just a little bit. i understand that my gpu isnāt that great for vcv but i canāt upgrade itā¦ worth asking anyway 
1 Like
If you have an old hd upgrading to an ssd will improve your laptop 100% itās performance. Maybe not vcv but the overall experience.
1 Like
Realtime will not improve your performance, it make the CPU jump between the process at the moment when is needed, for some kind of work it could reduce your performance
to force your CPU work at the entire capacity:
echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
it will improve the experience (on linux)at 120%
2 Likes
i used to have ubunutstudio for ages that came with real time kernel, so when i saw the option āreal time priorityā i kinda assumed i knew what it wasā¦ thank you for writing this. should i force the cpu? i need to read about this before doing this. can you elaborate on this please? links maybe?
ubuntu-studio comes with
studio-controls
which greatly helps setting up jack correctly and itās possible to set cpu-governor with it also. just get rid of kde and use something simpler as fluxbox, icewm or openbox, this should improve performance also.
Iām seriously thinking about going back to ubuntu-studio, ubuntu has a lot of bling bling that i dont really nead.
1 Like
Just a data point, but as of the Linux kernel 5.0 the real-time priority patches have been accepted into the main-line kernel, so it is now possible to run RT on a stock kernel if you need to.
Iām not saying you shouldnāt go to Ubuntu Studio (I havenāt used it, so I donāt have an opinion), just that as of Linux 5.0 there are more options.
1 Like
I m not saying āDo not use Real timeā use it, It will allow you reduce latency.
about the CPU governor , I have a link I wrote that 
but you can read some of this here
It will increase the use of energy and will make your fan work a lot, but it is not something like āForceā the CPU to do something that it canāt do. also it is mandatory for instance, to run modern games on Linux.
edited: CPU frequency scaling - ArchWiki
1 Like
For further improvements lower the samplerate to 44.1 and make sure your system hardware is set to the same values so you donāt have to up/downsample. Use larger buffer sizes in the audio interface.
3 Likes
Thatās a really important one. I once accidentally got them out of sync (44.1 vs 48), and yea, you want to do this!
1 Like
I moved this conversation to the category where it belongs (not the #lounge) and changed the title so that it reflects the discussion (āSSD disks vs. other ways to improve Rack performances on Linuxā). I hope this makes sense 
Reminder for everyone: please do the same when needed on the topics you created; feel free to suggest me or other moderators to do it on other peopleās topics 
2 Likes
thanks! i wasnāt happy with my initial title - english is not my mother tongue.
iām very aware of that. when i record with VCV recorder (video) i need the biggest buffersize along side 44.1khz. and ofcourse i have to reduce the framerate. thanks
Thanks a lot for this very interesting discussion I could follow.
Maybe a little off-topic, but possibly helpful for others
On my ca.10 years āveryā old PC (i7, 8GB Ram, SSD & HDD Disks, GeForce GTX 285) running Windows 10 Pro, I had my problems to follow some VCV patch files ā¦ Yes, Iām still learning 
With help of this discussion here I found the bottleneck on my system 
Now Iām setting the Sample Rate of 44.1 kHz, Frame Rate is set to 60Hz (for the moment), the Block Size is setting on the maximum (4096) and now itās running smoothly.
Thanks again for the food for thought.
2 Likes
I was frustrated by constantly hitting the wall with my patch sizes until I switched to the Skrylar JACK I/O module. Much better performance, my patches no longer fall over as they grow. Alas, the plugin is no longer maintained and it seriously needs updated. Connections to & from the module are not persistent on reload, nor will it autoconnect via QJackCtl. My guess is that some spots in the code need updated to the latest JACK API. At any rate, despite these caveats the module offers superior JACK performance in VCV Rack.
I was frustrated with Rack performances until I stopped using Jack [details] and kept only using Alsa. EDIT: this reversed (and I got back to Jack) after further messing with kernels.
YMMV I guess.
It varies indeed. My hardware is a bit different, I have an M-Audio Delta 66 audio interface running at 48 kHz, works nicely with JACK.
We forgot to post the main resource about thisā¦ https://vcvrack.com/manual/FAQ#how-do-i-improve-performance-of-vcv-rack
I had one of those from 2000 to 20019. My new computer doesnāt have any legacy slots, to I had to update.
I had one of those from 2000 to 20019.
Long-lived machines, eh ? 
4 Likes