SOLVED: One audio plugin seems to be getting low priority

(If you think I should be posting this somewhere else please let me know. The reason I suspect it’s NixOS-specific is described in the second section below, titled A hunch, and some things I've tried.)

The problem

I use NixOS with MusNix. (This issue is cross-posted to the MusNix issue tracker.) Audio on my system is in general perfect, with the exception of a single sound-generating plugin called PianoTeq.

I’ve been using QJackCtl, a2jmidid, Ardour, various other plugins (which modify rather than generate sound), and my external soundcard (a Scarlett Focusrite) with zero problems. But recently I started using Pianoteq, controlling it with a USB MIDI keyboard. It stutters, pops, and sometimes goes siilent. When it goes silent, Pianoteq pops up a window sometimes telling me that my computer can’t handle it – but this is a decent 2017 laptop, and Pianoteq runs fine on much older hardware.

Sometimes the problem is more or less severe. Sometimes I can smash the keyboard and there are no glitches. I keep running top to try to find some CPU hog but there never seems to be one – almost always, the biggest hog is ArdourGUI at around 25%. Here’s a typical screenshot of top’s output:

3509 jeff 20 0 3023088 892656 222504 S 17.6 5.5 1:50.61 ArdourGUI
3805 jeff 20 0 10980 3752 3284 R 11.8 0.0 0:00.04 top
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 5.9 0.0 0:00.90 kworker/u8:0-events_unbound
1045 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 5.9 0.0 0:00.94 kworker/1:3-events
3479 jeff 20 0 281180 131224 111364 S 5.9 0.8 0:06.50 jackd
1 root 20 0 168556 13128 9744 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.35 systemd

(with everything after that using 0.0 %CPU and 0.0 %MEM).

A hunch, and some things I’ve tried

I suspect it’s not being given high priority.

In QJackCtl under Setup, on the Settings tab, under the Advanced subtab, one can choose a priority level. I tried setting that to 90, restarted QJackCtl and everything that depends on it, and didn’t notice any change.

I’ve found some procedural instructions online about giving higher priority to audio processes, but I suspect they’re not going to work in NixOS. One, I remember, told me to edit some config file that didn’t even exist on my machine. (Sorry, it’s been a while, I didn’t record the details.)

I’ve searched online and haven’t found anything resembling this problem described elsewhere, even omitting Nix and NixOS.

SOLVED. I just needed to disable CPU throttling for each core:

sudo cpufreq-set -c 0 -g performance
sudo cpufreq-set -c 1 -g performance
sudo cpufreq-set -c 2 -g performance
sudo cpufreq-set -c 3 -g performance

The Pianoteq Linux README says as much, for CPUs that aren’t beefy. Sorry and thanks!