Really struggling with Latency

Dear all

This looks like a great forum - I would appreciate some help please.

I am reasonably new to the process of computer music. I have a new spec PC, with 2GB Ram, a new AMD chip and 200GB+ Hard drive.

Software wise - I am running S5 PE with windows XP.

Hardware - I have a Roland Edirol SC-D70 sound canvas, connected to the PC via USB2.0 cable. I have a Yamaha Electric Piano P-200, functioning both as a proper keyboard and a midi in/out device into the sound canvas.

I have the software set up to have ASIO drivers but I cannot get a satisfactory audio sounds. I have two ways of changing the latency:
1) through windows control panel and directly with the SC-d70 driver
2) through the audio options within S5.

I either have good audio sounds (no pops, hangs or drops) but there is such a major delay between me pressing a key and hearing the sounds, or I have an inperceptable lag in key stoke to noise output but when playing back recorded sounds - get awful distortion, pops and drops.

I am not a techie, and am mainly self taught, so I would be grateful if there is anyone out there who may be able to advise??

Many thanks for your time.

ProperBo

Your computer should be plenty capable of handling a fair number of audio tracks and some effects at low latency. My first guess is that you either have a device problem or some other program(s) running in the background that are interfering. It should be pretty easy to fix.

First off, check out the sonar manual under dropouts-- it has a really good section on dealing with these things.

Make sure you start out trying to solve this problem with simple streams of audio only-- certain software synthesizers and effects can be extremely demanding and may not cooperate with certain systems. Some computers can run 80 instances of one reverb effect but have trouble with one instance of another, for example.

Is the Edirol thing your soundcard, and if so, is it the only audio interface/soundcard connected to the computer? Start off with just one soundcard connected and make sure any other audio devices are disabled in your computer, in case it's the devices that are fighting with each other. You can do this in Start Menu> Control Panel> System> Hardware> Device Manager> Sound, Video, and Game controllers. Just right-click on any soundcards you're not using and disable them (you can easily re-enable them later the same way).

Similarly, disable any programs that are running in the background, such as antivirus, instant messaging, email, media players, etc. These can sometimes be a little tricky to track down, but a good place to start is by right-clicking any icons in the system tray (lower right corner of the desktop) selecting close, exit, or quit or whatever.

Also, defragment the hard disk(s) to make sure that's not the problem (Start menu>all programs>accessories>system tools>disk defragmenter).

Once all that's done, if you still have problems, it'll be a lot easier to troubleshoot, although hopefully it won't get that far. More detailed system specs would be helpful, especially info such as actual CPU, chipset, hard disk speed and size, etc. If you're not sure of this stuff a very handy little utility is Belarc Advisor, which you can download for free and it will spit out a complete rundown on your whole system.

There are two fundamental things that cause dropouts-- one is that system is simply overloaded and either the CPU, the data bus, or the hard disk can't keep up with the incoming audio stream, and the other is that the computer is trying to multitask and some other device or program or process is taking over system resources, like when you're typing something and a popup comes up to tell you you've got mail or whatever. I think you're experiencing the latter, and it's probably just one weird little thing that can be easily remedied if you start from the beginning.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: properbopeep

Dear all

This looks like a great forum - I would appreciate some help please.

I am reasonably new to the process of computer music. I have a new spec PC, with 2GB Ram, a new AMD chip and 200GB+ Hard drive.

Software wise - I am running S5 PE with windows XP.

Hardware - I have a Roland Edirol SC-D70 sound canvas, connected to the PC via USB2.0 cable. I have a Yamaha Electric Piano P-200, functioning both as a proper keyboard and a midi in/out device into the sound canvas.

I have the software set up to have ASIO drivers but I cannot get a satisfactory audio sounds. I have two ways of changing the latency:
1) through windows control panel and directly with the SC-d70 driver
2) through the audio options within S5.

I either have good audio sounds (no pops, hangs or drops) but there is such a major delay between me pressing a key and hearing the sounds, or I have an inperceptable lag in key stoke to noise output but when playing back recorded sounds - get awful distortion, pops and drops.

I am not a techie, and am mainly self taught, so I would be grateful if there is anyone out there who may be able to advise??

Many thanks for your time.

ProperBo

If you are not using software synths you don't need to use input monitoring so latency won't be an issue. If your sound card has a software mixer use that to monitor the inputs, if not get a small mixer so you can monitor the keyboard, SC-D70, and the computer all at once without latency.

If you do use a software synth you will be dealing with latency, all you can do is try to get it tuned as low as possible. If you use ASIO you will need to use the ASIO control panel (buffers setting) for your card, if you use WDM you can use the slider in Sonar.