Decreased Latentcy in X2 PC?

Hi Larry,

Latency comes from two potential sources:

• Audio interface
• Latent plugins

In your first example, you're using latent plugins.  (Plugins that use additional buffers)
Mastering type plugins often use "look ahead" type processing... which requires more buffering (latency).

In the second example, you're not using latent plugins.  


UAD plugins sound great, but you're dealing with additional latency because audio has to be routed to/from the DSP.

SONAR X2 doesn't ship with arbitrary "latent" plugins. The plugins that induce delay are perfect space, R-MIX, the console emulation, and some of the compressors. These do so for a reason - they require look ahead buffers for processing. 

Troubleshooting delay compensation related latency is very simple in SONAR. Click the ADC button on the control bar in the transport section and it will disable delay compensation. If you have no latency now,  it means that the delay was caused by a plugin in the circuit. You can now use a process of elimination by removing the plugins/modules one by one.

If you still have delay it could be for a few reasons:

- You are using an audio buffer size that is too large for your audio interface. Check the driver mode in ASIO the buffer size is exactly what you set it to in the ASIO control panel. In WDM it is what you set on the latency slider multiplied by the the number of buffers setting. 

- Latency could also by caused by the driver - check your drivers control panel for related settings.

I hate to say it but from your description if switching to a lower latency with just the sample project is causing a lockup, its looks like you have some device driver instability or the driver itself is deadlocking somehow.

Even with onboard audio I am able to set the latency to about 6 msec and have no lockups whatsoever. Its highly unlikely that the cause of the hang is within SONAR, if not pretty much every user running at low latency would see this. A latent deadlock in the code WILL happen to everyone at some point when exercised enough.  

To explain the latency scenario in more technical terms, all that happens from SONAR's point of view when the buffer size is smaller is that driver callbacks are much more frequent and thereby the CPU load is higher. There is of course a greater possibility of a dropout but it shouldn't make the app more unstable unless we had a deadlock scenario. That is more or less ruled out since there are thousands of users running X2 today at very low latencies with no problems. That leaves the driver and some external factors as possibilities to investigate. 

To narrow it down further experiment with other driver modes with your device - WDM for example and see if the same issue persists. You could also try your onboard audio as a test to narrow down the problem scenario. Unless you are running sub 10 msec buffer sizes you WILL have audible buffer induced latency. 
If you want us to investigate the source of the hang you will have to send us a minidump file that can capture the state at the time of the hang. If you don't have the tools to do that, contact support and they will send you a utility to capture the hang dump. The stack at the time of the hang could show what is causing your system to lock up.


PS:
You are running the quickfix right?
 
ADC == automatic delay compensation. The button on the toolbar disables SONAR's automatic delay compensation mechanism which can be caused by plugins or external inserts. 
PDC = plugin delay compensation.

Where is the ADC Button? I don't see it on the control bar transport section. I have the PDC on the mix module but no ADC.