Why is WinXP better at running Audacity than Xubuntu?

[Gale Andrews]

I was hoping to pick up some explanations/tips along the lines of Steve's solution to my gaps issue where there may be tweaks that one could do

I think you should face facts - Ubuntu and even its light derivatives are "heavy" OS'es. Simply don't use them on a machine like yours. That said, are you still trying to use EZCap? Have you selected its (hw) choice as Audacity recording device which will give you direct access to it?

Is the recording still stalling?


Gale

[jg1]

Yes I am using EZcap as that's the only cassette transport I have with a digital/USB output. Father Christmas brought it a couple of years back and I've never got round to using it before. As it's low mileage as compared with the analogue kit I have, the reproduction is a million times better. It comes up in Audacity preferences as "USB PnP Audio Device: Audio (hw:1,0)" whatever that means. But Audacity doesn't control it; I have to press the buttons to make it start/ stop etc.

In my first post I said I'd found a way to do the recording in Xubuntu but that meant reducing quality.

Since the software build on the Xubuntu partition is the same as those on the other m/cs I used audacity v2.1.2 with the same preferences including the 48000 Hz default project rate that solved the recording skips issue. Sadly the recording would not proceed beyond 1 minute, stopping after anything from a few seconds to around 50secs. Fiddling about a bit I've found that it will run OK if in the Quality Preferences I set Default sample format = 16-bit and High-quality conversion: Sample rate converter = Medium Quality. The results appear to be OK as the quality of the source cassettes leaves a lot to be desired.

However as my objective is to get rid of boxes and boxes of old cassettes, I'd like to digitise them as faithfully as possible so reducing quality is a last resort.

When I analysed the WinXP recordings I found a lot of extraneous noise that doesn't appear on recordings made with the big PC (XPS17) so as I'm not inclined to spend time faffing with windows, I've put the video editing on hold and started to do the Audacity recording on the big PC. However, out of interest (and possibly for future reference) I am interested in anything that would make Audacity more efficient when running on *ubuntu, or Linux in general.

I could go out and splash a load of cash on some new hardware but ... ... I return to my original question:

Why is WinXP better at running Audacity than Xubuntu?

jg

[steve]

Why is WinXP better at running Audacity than Xubuntu?

In my experience it isn't.
I've run Audacity in XP and Linux on the same hardware and the performance is on the whole very similar.

[jg1]

I guess it's because my setup on the Inspiron1300 is marginal that any differences show up. Both systems on the Inspiron are pretty pared down but I guess XP (being older) is less heavy on the graphics which is where the old box falls down. I've found that there's quite a lot goes on graphics-wise even if the rendering is off (either screen off or suppressed/hidden). I've done everything I can to clean out stuff that's unused or slows the machine down. Short of looking at all the myriad bits and pieces that *ubuntu brings in and checking out their individual dependencies (a life long job methinks), there's not much more i can do.

I've got a workaround and the application software does what it says on the tin, so I guess that's where I'll have to leave it unless something strikes me out of the blue that merits further investigation.

Thanks again, everyone, for taking the trouble to contribute. Much appreciated.
jg

[Gale Andrews]

Why is WinXP better at running Audacity than Xubuntu?

In my experience it isn't.
I've run Audacity in XP and Linux on the same hardware and the performance is on the whole very similar.

It probably depends on how primitive the hardware is. When I had XP with Ubuntu 13.04 (I think) on my 1 GB RAM 1 GHz netbook, XP was much faster.

On the machine you have, *.buntu is a poor choice, IMO.

Gale

[steve]

*buntu tends to run quite a lot of background services which can slow it down a lot.
Background indexing for "Search" applications can cripple old hardware, so may need to be disabled.
Graphics acceleration is often a problem with old hardware, so a windows manager that does not use graphics acceleration may be needed for reasonable performance.

Starting from a "heavy" OS and then trying to make it "lighter" is not a good approach. Better to start minimal and add features that you actually need.

[jg1]

Good thinking, Steve. WinXP indexing is disabled on the NTFS drives. I've had a look at Xubuntu and the file system specs and can't immediately see a place to disable background indexing. However, it had occurred to me that ext2 might be quicker than other file systems. At the moment everything is on ext4 to reduce risk of unrecoverable disk errors.

I take the point that it's better to start with a quick system and add to it rather than make a heavy one lighter. However, the Inspiron1300 is one of 6 machines and low maintenance overhead and ease of use are important factors. The main use for the inspiron is email which can sit there all day while I'm doing stuff on another box. In this role and that of a portable note book and briefcase it is 100% successful. The thing that really kills it is when it tries to use the swap file. I've got the swap settings so it is rarely used other than for hibernation. Firefox can be a pain because modern web pages carry so much garbage that if you open more than a couple it rapidly fills up RAM unless you have scripts disabled and ad blockers etc, but these slow things down, too.

However, I fear we're getting off topic !
jg

[autodctr]

Just wanted to make a comment about the "weight" of Linux. I run Xubuntu and on my home PC, I have quite a few extra things running. So, last night while I was out at the church, I booted that machine up. I have Bluetooth disabled and auto updates disabled on boot. Otherwise, all else is as it came/installed. It is using 212 meg of memory just sitting there. With Audacity loaded, running, and recording 18 tracks, it is using 256 meg of memory. No swap being used. CPU running at 8%. I really would not call that a "heavy" OS.