Best Sound Card To Avoid Latency???

So, recently ditched the hard disk recorder and upgraded my PC to a Pentium 4 3.6GHz machine. Got the Tascam FW-1804 audio interface, Sonar 4 Producer. Everything works great.

After cranking down the latency to use the DXi Synths, the audio degrades and well... everything sounds terrible.

My on board Sound Card is an Audigy, (came with the PC) and I've seen other threads where the Audigy was identified as a lousy card. Can anybody recommend a GREAT card?

Also I think some folks are confusing the Audio Card issue with the Audio Interface issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when using a FW Audio interface like my Tascam, you are still depending on your audio card to generate the soft synths. That being the case... I think I need that GREAT sound card to complete my set up. Ya?

Thanks all.

There are a lot of threads regarding sound cards. Just search on a brand name like EMU or M-Audio, etc. Best bang for the buck is the EMU 1212M. AISO drivers have the lowest latency.

Again, if you have an FW1884, you have no need for another soundcard unless you just want one. It would be functionally redundant.

Hi there -- how do you like your 1804? Does it have ASIO drivers?

Michael

With regard to optimizing your rig and interface -- Sonar has, of course, settings for mixing latency. But that mixing latency buffer is just a cushion for your soundcard. (If Sonar's mixing latency buffer setting is set too low for your hardware interface's own latency, you may get pops, crackles, or a full on abort of the PB/streaming.)

But your FW interface may also have adjustable buffers, as well. These need to be set up for your particular system.

For instance, my own MOTU 828mkII has a range of possible i/o buffer settings from 96 samples to 2048 (which would work out to about 2 ms to about 46 ms -- at 44.1 kHz). With my setup, I'm able to get the MOTU buffers down to 128 without any problems -- but 96 produces pops and crackles.

With it set that way, Sonar's Profiler sets its own minimum mixing latency buffer appropriately to 2.9 ms at 44.1 kHz (to find the time of your buffer's latency, divide the number of samples by the sample rate, ie, 128/44100, which comes out to about .0029 second, or 2.9 milliseconds).


BTW, here's a somewhat thorough exploration of latency issues at Sound On Sound with specific sections on optimizing Sonar and a few other major software tools:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/articles/pcmusician.htm



The one thing it doesn't cover is automatic compensation for interface latency as it applies to track alignment, which the latest version of Pro Tools and Digital Performer (and, I believe, Cubase/Nuendo) have, I'm told. (The upshot here, is that by not compensating for processing latency in the interface, Sonar ends up placing new tracks x number of samples late with reference to the audio being played back. On my rig, as described above, this works out to 366 samples, about 8.3 ms at 44.1. I'm guessing that's 128 ms on both input and output conversion and then another 110 samples from somwhere or other.)

But, even though Sonar marketing has indicated there's "full delay compensation" -- I have not been able to find anything but plug-in delay compensation -- which is an entirely different propostiion. Anyhow, subject for another thread (and it already exists in this forum, here.)

And if I'm missing something, please let me know!