powerbook sound

[Dragomir der Schwartzer Schwan]

I recently purchased the 12 inch powerbook, which I absolutely love (
being an old unix hack and all ). I have noticed what can only be
described as laggy sound... any time an asynchronous sound event occurs
( such as when an error occurs ), I hear the speakers initialize, then
a second or so later, the sound playing...

It seems to me like it is loading and unloading the sound driver every
time it wants to play a sound, which is fine... but is this configurable
somewhere? The delay gets to be a bit annoying :)

--
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[matt neuburg]

In <bfugo5$jk4$1@news-int.gatech.edu> Dragomir der Schwartzer Schwan
wrote:

> I recently purchased the 12 inch powerbook, which I absolutely love (
> being an old unix hack and all ). I have noticed what can only be
> described as laggy sound... any time an asynchronous sound event
> occurs ( such as when an error occurs ), I hear the speakers
> initialize, then a second or so later, the sound playing...
>
> It seems to me like it is loading and unloading the sound driver every
> time it wants to play a sound, which is fine... but is this
> configurable somewhere? The delay gets to be a bit annoying :)

You are exactly correct about what's happening. That's just how the
system works on these machines. There are third-party utilities (try
versiontracker) that are supposed to produce sounds at intervals to keep
the sound driver loaded, but I've never used one. m.

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[Simon Slavin]

In article <bfugo5$jk4$1@news-int.gatech.edu>,
Dragomir der Schwartzer Schwan <chris@acheris.net> wrote:

>I recently purchased the 12 inch powerbook, which I absolutely love (
>being an old unix hack and all ). I have noticed what can only be
>described as laggy sound... any time an asynchronous sound event occurs
>( such as when an error occurs ), I hear the speakers initialize, then
>a second or so later, the sound playing...
>
>It seems to me like it is loading and unloading the sound driver every
>time it wants to play a sound

Good guess, but it's actually to do with saving power. If the
sound circuitry isn't used for a little time then it's turned-off
to save battery power (the amplifier uses quite a lot of power).
So when a sound has to be played the PB has to turn on the sound
circuitry and wait for it to warm up before it plays the sound.
You can get some sort of hack which plays an almost silent sound
every minute to stop the circuitry turning off, but that means
your battery will last less long.

[David Turley]

In article <bfugo5$jk4$1@news-int.gatech.edu>,

> Dragomir der Schwartzer Schwan <chris@acheris.net> wrote:
>

>>I recently purchased the 12 inch powerbook, which I absolutely love (
>>being an old unix hack and all ). I have noticed what can only be
>>described as laggy sound... any time an asynchronous sound event
>>occurs ( such as when an error occurs ), I hear the speakers
>>initialize, then a second or so later, the sound playing... It seems
>>to me like it is loading and unloading the sound driver every time it
>>wants to play a sound

[url]http://mrfeinberg.com/KeepSoundAwake/[/url]