[pulseaudio-discuss] arecord CPU consumption high with pulseaudio

[Jim Duda]

I've noticed that when I use arecord without pulse, raw alsa, the cpu 
consumption of arecord is very low, almost zero.

However, when using arecord with pulseaudio, I find cpu consumption very 
high.

With 0.9.6, I found that arecord ran in the high 90's, and using ^C to 
kill the process wasn't useful.  I had to kill -9.

With >= 0.9.9, I found that arecord ran around 75%, and using ^C would 
work consistently.

I have a 2.8 Ghz P4 with hyperthreading.

Is it expected that arecord usage be so high with pulseaudio?

I also found another curious note.  With 0.9.6, a combined_sink results 
in pulseaudion consuming ~ 10-20% cpu while playing a wav file.  With >= 
0.9.10, I have found that using a combined_sink now consumes 50%.  I 
don't find this unreasonable giving what combined sink is doing, just 
thought I'd pass on my findings.

Example:
load-module module-combine sink_name=misterhouse 
resample_method="src-sinc-best-quality" 
master=alsa_output.pci_1274_5880_alsa_playback_0 
slaves=alsa_output.pci_8086_24d5_alsa_playback_0

Just attempting to route audio out 2 different cards.

Jim