What's your latency?

I had initially posted this prior to shopping for a new DAW, trying to get some ideas on what to expect and what to buy.

Since no one provided any insight, I still want to summarize a few findings that may help others.

Here are the reported latency and round trip times for the VS-700 and the Octa-Capture:

VS-700
 48 : 1.1 :  8.7  (4.4 : 4.3)
 64 : 1.5 :  9.4  (5.1 : 4.3)
 96 : 2.2 : 11.9  (5.6 : 6.3)
128 : 2.9 : 18.3  (7.0 : 11.3)
256 : 5.8 : 28.9 (11.8 : 17.1)
buffer size : buffer latency : round trip (in:out)

These are not dependent on your DAW, it's just the interface (took me a while to undestand).

Where the DAW PC comes into the game is what settings you can actually use without audio drop outs.  Now, this is highly system specific and I ran into a major problem that the new beefy DAW didn't come with a suitable graphic card i.e. the graphic driver caused latency spikes that made the audio engine stop after 3 minutes. I ended up swapping the graphic card to an ATI HD 5450, which immediately cured the unexpectedly stopping audio engine.

From then onwards I had good performance down to ASIO buffers of 128 (occasionally 96) samples, but it didn't make me happy yet. Eventually I found a set-up error that makes me wonder why it worked so well in the first place: I'm using a VS-700 and a Octa-Capture synced via VS EXPAND, but had forgotten to set the synchronisation in the VS-700 to DIGITAL 1 (which it has to be according to the manual) making the Octa-Capture the master.
 
Now that I'm using the correct sync mode these interfaces really ROCK!!! I can record at ASIO buffer sizes of 48 samples without drop outs or glitches for 10+ minutes!! 

Mully


Interesting stats Bertyl....was the original video card the Nvidia in your sig?

Cheers.

 
Thanks, forgot to update my signature to the ATI 5450 ...
Yes, in my case the trouble maker was the "Nvidia Geforce GT 630 2GB DDR3"
 
 
I just wanted to post a "happy" ending. I was a bit frustated not getting the new DAW to live up to what it was bought for, but once you find all the right settings, it runs super nice. However, I couldn't have done it without all the support from other users in this forum. THANKS A LOT FOR SHARING ALL YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND BEING SO EAGER TO HELP!!! <<caps intended>>

John T


You know, I've just realised I don't even know what my latency is, haven't thought about it in a long time. Low enough so it feels immediate for mixing. Not low enough that I can input monitor with effects, but I've worked out a direct monitoring solution for that so it never comes up. 

Looking back I'm glad it didn't work right away because I meanwhile learned a lot about direct monitoring options (and with 2 interfaces there are plenty) and how to set that a properly with several headphone mixes. I actually learned so much in a short time that my notes turn into some sort of a manual ...
 
So you're right. Latency isn't the big thing anymore (except for special situations e.g. tracking e-drums with audio and MIDI in parallel) ...
 
 
 

With 48 samples set the total round trip here is 6.8ms on the now older quad core Q9300 setup.

Graphic card is a ATI HD 4300/4500.

Time for an upgrade but you know, the whole thing just works with zero drama.

...4.4ms would certainly be nice though Craig!

Cheers.