a sound is generated and when you can hear it. When the audio signal
flows through a computer, that means that the computer has to be able to
receive the signal, process it and send it back out again as fast as
- possible.<br />
+ possible.<br>
And that is where it becomes very important <em>what</em> computer system
you have, because it is <strong>absolutely not</strong> the case that any
computer can do this job well.
<dt><abbr title="Central Processing Unit">CPU</abbr> speed control</dt>
<dd>Handling audio with low latency requires that your processor keeps
running at its highest speed at all times. Many portable systems try to
- regulate processor speed in order to save power — for low latency
+ regulate processor speed in order to save power—for low latency
audio, you want this totally disabled, either in the BIOS or at the OS
level.</dd>
<dt>Excessive Interrupt Sharing</dt>
<dd>SMIs are interrupts sent by the motherboard to tell the computer
about the state of various hardware. They cannot safely be disabled,
but they can also take a relatively long time to process. It is better
- to have a motherboard which never sends SMIs at all — this is
+ to have a motherboard which never sends SMIs at all—this is
also a requirement for realtime stock trading systems, which have
similar issues with latency.</dd>
<dt>Hyperthreading</dt>