First off, I have been waiting for an app like this for a while, it's awesome.

And the question...When I start playing an mp3, my processor goes to 100% utilization. I nice the process with no issue, though even still I experience some skipping. Do all people have the same experience with their processors, or is this something that I can correct through configuration?

I am using the gstreamer engine in Amarok on Debian Sid, kernel 2.6.8.

Thanks!

I would try some of the other engines.

If this isn't fixed in 1.1.1, which I thought it was, use the xine-engine.

paul wrote:

When I start playing an mp3, my processor goes to 100% utilization.

Don't use the ffmpeg GStreamer plugin. Instead, install the mad plugin for mp3.

Not sure if this is related, but I'm also seeing a periodic processor spike using gstreamer to alsasink, with oggs and mp3s.

About every 4 seconds the CPU will burst to 50%, but most of it seems to be in kernel-space, so it causes a jerkiness in any interactive apps.

No other sound-related app does this.

This is on an AMD64, Debian Pure64 (2.6.8.1 kernel) 64-bit native Amarok. Gcc 3.3.5

Now, since this doesn't happen with the arts engine, I'm going to assume the problem lies in gstreamer.

Any ideas?

BTW, I -love- Amarok. May be contributing a patch for replaygain support soon.

-Z

After some more investigation, I think I discovered the culprit.

It seems the "monitor changes" option is the problem. My music directory has over 500 directories, with 10 or more files each. I think this is causing the periodic spike.

I had it turned off, but recently I accidently nuked my amarok settings, and it got turned back on.

My bad!

-Z