This is EXCELLENT information @ccaudle! Where were you when I was trying to convert my daily-driver distro to a recording rig? LOL!
What you are describing seems to fit my symptoms. When I first load some of my plugins is when an xrun or 2 appears. Then it “settles in” and everything is fine. With Ugritone, the xruns continue…like a SLOW counter…until it freezes my system or crashes out. But loading Ugritone, or switching instruments (loading the new instrument samples?) is when the bulk of xruns happens.
I was focused on the cpu governor, as my default is “powersave”, if I remember correctly. I cannot choose “ondemand” with my cpu (an Intel i5 listed above in my curated inxi -Fxz output)…can’t remember why. So “performance” is where I’m at now. It’s noticeably better, but not ideal.
I found a program/utility called Millisecond that checks your system parameters and suggests manual tweaks. I go through the checklist at every boot/reboot. It’s been very helpful for performance, but not perfect.
Millisecond incorporates a lot of the suggestions from linuxaudio.com
Your suggestions for manual frequency-set and kernel preemption are interesting, because I haven’t heard of or seen them discussed before. I will absolutely give them a try, but I need a spare day to focus on things, as life is too hectic and chaotic at the moment. I’ll let you know how helpful your suggestions are/were by tagging you in this thread. TKS Chris!
I had a thought yesterday - if your edrums use a Roland module, or one of the Yamaha or Alesis ones listed here, or a Millennium 850, then you could buy one of the somewhat-affordable Sound Editions from drum-tec.com and load the better samples into your module and drum away.
If the sounds cut the mustard then voila just record the audio out. If not, then you’ve potentially got better dounds for monitoring while you just record the raw MIDI into Ardour.
My Alesis is the DM10-MKii Pro module. The only Alesis kits that allow loading 3rd party samples appear to be Crimson and Strike kits. And I think the newest kits, the Strata Club and Strata Prime, allow 3rd party samples. Appreciate the link, because I didn’t know that website existed and I’m sure others will be glad to know about it.
I don’t care about onboard sounds, because I don’t play live, I only record. And I record with MIDI because I absolutely want to “fan out” the individual tracks for each trigger/sound. So 3rd party sounds are meaningless to me, but could be big deal to anyone who records stereo analog/audio tracks, or plays live.