> I use Timidity, which is a program that takes a MIDI file, mixes samples
> in software, and then sends an audio stream to the sound card. It eats
> around 50% CPU on some files, and is very sensitive to losing its time
> slice.
>
> Anyway, something I've noticed in later kernels, particularly 2.1.22. If I
> load up the curses version of ncftp and "ls -l" a large directory on an
> FTP site, Timidity apparently loses its time slice and the music skips
> during the text scroll.
>
> Keep in mind that I run timidity with a -20 priority. Some other
> applications, such as Tiny Fugue, do this too.
>
> Any idea what causes this? This is a P133, PCI video, 32MB RAM.
Make timidity a real time process (SCHED_RR) with sched_setscheduler().
-Andi