Audio Latency Questions

[confus-ed]

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

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/Sep0...sician0902.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct0...sician1002.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 ... 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 ... 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
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.