Audio Latency Questions

[Trout]

Hi
I have several questions about possible audio latency settings for a unique combination of devices being drivin by windows xp pro.
brief hardware info:

Soyo Dragon KT400 Ultra "black edition"
Amd 2500+ Barton core 333
512 megs corsair PC2700 DDR
seagate 80 gig 7200rpm ata 100
Ati 7000 radeon 64 meg dual head
No Modem (system not used online)
CMI8738 onboard audio
M-Audio radium61 usb keyboard/device controller This One (http://www.midiman.com/index.php?do=products.main&ID=ceda435e2dd7ce8d3b13c45796925b27)
Roland Digital recorder This One (http://www.rolandus.com/products/details.asp?catid=12&subcatid=48&prodid=VS%2D1824CD)
Alesis Amplified Monitor/speakers Here (http://alesis.com/products/m1active/)

Software:
Windows XP Pro SP1 w/all patches
Stienberg Cubase SX

OK Now The Fun Part,, Questions we cant find answers for on any of the recording forums,Nor in the manuals for these devices.
Sync up of all the devices went ok,They all see and control each other, BUT
Latency is terrible.
We Hit a note on the keyboard,to playback live, or record,And theres a huge delay before the actual note deploys.
We saw this setup in a trade demo, And latency was only .3ms,
BUT ours is running at about 1 Full second+.
We were told by a rep, that its a windows setting, But,We are unable to locate any actual information about these settings,Or possible registry edit/settings that apply.
All of these componets are SUPPOSED to be Compatable with XP Pro,And its a very popular recording software,BUT,Actual settings and Good hints are very hard to locate.
Any info leading to the whereabouts of latency adjustments will be applauded~!!
Thanks
Trout :thumbs:

[Platypus]

CMI8738 onboard audio

We saw this setup in a trade demo, And latency was only .3ms,
BUT ours is running at about 1 Full second+.


Was the setup you saw running using onboard sound? For very low latency you'd expect to be using a good quality soundcard with low latency drivers, commonly ASIO. You can adjust the latency against buffer size in the sound driver.

Also, WinXP's USB driver setup is problematic for sound/MIDI devices, I believe there is a vastly improved version, is that already included in your patches? If not I'll see what I can find out about it. (The most awkward problem with USB is jitter, which changes the latency figure during use, so you can't compensate like you would for a constant latency by just moving the track. Firewire has the potential to be the better system, it's designed for uninterrupted media streaming.)

There are other hardware tuning issues too like bus mastering, other bus mastering devices in the system can cause glitching in the passage of sound data, so for example a video card which has the option in the driver to disable bus mastering can be helpful.

[confus-ed]

So let me 'decode & extrapolate' a bit ... (that's where I make it up to 'fit' :D) ...

You see this funky setup on some 'unknown' kit, get taken in by some slick sales pitch, 'assume' that one lot of hardware is the same as another, put this 'setup' on some 'other' equipment & lo ... 'tis CRAP !

Well, the moral of the story is, check your facts (performance vs 'kit') .... & oh buy a 'decent' s/c & all will probably be well (You aren't ever gonna get good quality if you insist on using a soundcard that has almost all its processing done by the cpu, you want something with decent hardware acceleration to cut the cpu 'involvement' & thus much of your latency ;))

[Platypus]

A couple of forums that might be useful are at Sound On Sound, as per the links below, or www.computermusic.co.uk


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Sep02/articles/pcmusician0902.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct02/articles/pcmusician1002.asp

[Trout]

Hi Again,,
Thanks guys for the responses,
Heres a few responses as well as more info on our equipment,
Quote:
You see this funky setup on some 'unknown' kit, get taken in by some slick sales pitch, 'assume' that one lot of hardware is the same as another, put this 'setup' on some 'other' equipment & lo ... 'tis CRAP !

Actually,, we subscribe to several recording mags,As well as musician forums,And componet buying was based on research from good sources,Not Sales reps.
I mention the setup we saw at the trade show simply as a referance to the huge latency differance between 2 similar machines.
This setup was Not a Kit.

Though Not ideal, their* onboard sound displayed VERY little delay, perhaps 1/10th of what we are seeing. *Emachine w/everything onboard
I agree,, useing the cpu to process the sound card onboards not a best case scenerio,And this IS going to be changed in a month or so.
Despite being onboard sound,
Cubase has resident ASIO drivers for the onboard sound on this motherboard,
It installed them, ran its self tests Everything passed and no conflicts.

Pro 52 Is a standalone software keyboard/synth. clicking a key in pro 52 displays a terrible delay also.As well as ALL software keyboard/synths.
Even Clicking the test windows sounds button in Windows control panel has terrible delay.
Kinda reminds me of a soft start setting.

We Have shut off all animations,screen savers,power option,messenger,messenger service,all error reporting,auto-updates,yada yada as sugested in most of the forums and recording mags,With very little improvement.

Anyways,, I was more curious if there were perhaps some simple settings or regedit, that might improve this.
Thanks For The GREAT repsonses :)

[NooNoo]

Norton?

[confus-ed]

You might want to have a look at this ... GeorgeBreese.com (http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/) ... this particular 'George' is the guy who writes many of VIAs utilities & post chipset patches ;)

The latency patches found there are more to do with pci timings & dma calls, than sound latency issues, but probably they might help with this problem.

Which makes me think ... just what is the problem ... too much latency (which you just 'allow for' don't you ?) or 'unpredictable' latency this 'usb jitter' Platypus mentions - in which case the above will help.

BTW ... if you ask me any setup that depends on s/w sound processing (i.e. by the cpu) is always gonna be more suscepible to latency, the less going betwixt the s/c & cpu the better ;) .... but I see you are 'onto' that one :)

[Trout]

You might want to have a look at this ... GeorgeBreese.com (http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/) ... this particular 'George' is the guy who writes many of VIAs utilities & post chipset patches ;)

The latency patches found there are more to do with pci timings & dma calls, than sound latency issues, but probably they might help with this problem.

Which makes me think ... just what is the problem ... too much latency (which you just 'allow for' don't you ?) or 'unpredictable' latency this 'usb jitter' Platypus mentions - in which case the above will help.

BTW ... if you ask me any setup that depends on s/w sound processing (i.e. by the cpu) is always gonna be more suscepible to latency, the less going betwixt the s/c & cpu the better ;) .... but I see you are 'onto' that one :)

OK Now were thinking here lol
We are replaceing the motherboard due to some problematic issues we had during setup,{Displaying "Unknown Processor" } During boot,, untill bios was flashed.
Replaceing the ATI 7000 to a nvidia Geforce 4,,We had A Hell of a time getting the ati setup. The ATI card wouldnt even run at 4X without crashing.
Bought a higher end sound card THIS ONE (http://www.audiotrak.net/prodigy71.htm)
That comes bundled with a demo version of cubase SX.. We Have the full version.
Supports the E-WDM driver:
WDM and ASIO 2.0
Direct KS support for SONAR
OS: Microsoft Windows XP/2000/ME/98SE

The E-WDM drivers support Prodigy 7.1 for perfect compatibility with Windows XP, 2000, ME and 98SE while offering ultra low latency performance with all popular music production applications including Nuendo, Cubase, Cakewalk, Sonar, and Logic

I'll Post the results possibly monday,,, Probly gonna take that long for this headache to go away,, lol Ive spent 4 days trying to get this damn thing working up to par .
In The meantime,,, I'll check ut those other links posted more,,
Thanks TONS~!! for all the time you spent helping :)
trout

[Platypus]

Your new soundcard looks very interesting, I look forward to hearing of your results.

Although you might have things covered pretty well with the OS settings, this:

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.htm

gives suggestions for XP optimisations for music, if you hadn't already run across it.

[confus-ed]

I googled a review of it AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 Sound Card review (http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/105/9/) ...

$100 looks good for this ;) ...

[Trout]

OK,,,
Heres a quick update,
Its ALL About the sound card,, I would of NEVER beleived it possible,, BUT
The results have proven it .
Latency " 0 " .
The BEST we could acheive with onboard sound was on a stand-alone synthesizer
was 65ms. Any further,it would Click/pop during keyed notes.
When trying to real time edit and add effects,latency was around 150ms.
Now the good part,, We Got THIS (http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.main&ID=adf95efc30b88aba043fa8b83343bfb8) Sound card,Stand-alone latency 0,,, On the Fly real time editting with applied effects,latency " 0 ". No POPS,crackles,Just pure clean sound.
Wasnt cheap either,, $145.00+tax.
Imagine,, the sound card costs more than the motherboard~!!
But HEY,, What matters are results,We Got Them,, FINALLY.
BTW,, the tweaks listed on this thread Im Sure are contributing also,And Id like to thank you guys for your help, :thumbs:
Trout

[Platypus]

The Audiophile 2496 is an excellent card, as long as you don't try to run four together under XP... :)

Glad you've got such a good result. Sounds like you probably don't need any further tweaking, but just to mention, if you're running ASIO drivers, it's helpful to set Services to a high priority, as ASIO drivers run as a Service under XP.

Also when mixing, if you want a lot of plug-in effects (that is, in software not on the card's DSP), soft synths etc running, you can back off on latency to give the CPU more headroom. You want low latency for recording, but for listening to the mix, more latency doesn't matter much and is less demanding on the CPU. Does the card have on-the-fly latency adjustment?

[confus-ed]

'ed smirks to himself & retires to his underground lair muttering about s/w sound cards & latency & 'iffy kit' ... :D