On Tuesday 17 July 2007 16:55, Brett Davidson wrote: > Zane Gilmore wrote: > > Nick Rout wrote: > >> On Tue, July 17, 2007 2:27 pm, Zane Gilmore wrote: > >>> I went to listen to my (legal) music just now and discovered that > >>> there a > >>> sound recurring in a reasonably random way. > >>> It sounds like a dripping tap and it happens at a random interval > >>> between > >>> approx 1 second to about > >>> 10 seconds. > >>> This makes listening to music impossible. > >>> > >>> Can anyone think of a way of tracking down it's source? > >>> > >>> Cheers, > >>> Zane > >> > >> what are you listening on? computer? ipod/mp3 player? you have the > >> band in > >> your office? > >> > >> Assuming computer, does it make the same sound using different player > >> software? > > > > Yes on my desktop computer running Kubuntu and some very hungry scripts. > > > > As it turned out one of the scripts I had written to do some DB > > manipulation finished what it was doing then the dripping tap stopped. > > > > My script was using all of the CPU it could get it hands on and was > > using hundreds of megs of RAM. When it finished so did the dripping > > tap... spooky > > > > The script had nothing to do with the sound system it was just a > > Python script. > > > > I don't have much of a clue what the hell it could have been... maybe > > some sort of resource alert? > > > > It was very irritating > > > > > > Zane > > Was your script doing lots of context switches or interrupts?
That is the assumption I made. I've had similar sounds when I switched from one desktop to another in KDE while the desktops were populated and Totem was playing a sound file. A sound file uses as much IO as it can get its hands on, and databases also use as much IO as it can get; when there's a context switch, there's likely to be a few necessary milliseconds that has been lost in between. It came across as a loud "click" with my equipment, but then, I've got a minimally-configured PC; a computer with more memory would "soften" the edges of the sound. At least, that's my 0.02c Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Gaul is quartered into three halves. Things which are impossible are equal to each other. Guerrilla warfare means up to their monkey tricks. Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom of the foolish. ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
