Sorry for not coming back sooner. I was having a bit of a nightmare last night, experimenting with different buffer size settings, and adding more soft synth tracks to my current test project. I had got up to thirteen synth tracks, plus one audio track (just some guitar noodling). I then added an instance of Rapture and I also decided to play with the Step Sequencer (didn't have that in 6). My lappy crashed five times, and at one point I experienced the dreaded BSOD. I even tried increasing the buffer size, quite considerably, just in case I was pushing the system too hard. But it still crashed, and I eventually deleted the Rapture instance.

Funny thing is, the CPU meter didn't show any real strain on the system at all. One of the eight cores was operating at around 45% and the others were being tickled at around 10 ~ 15%. The memory commit was showing as 3gb and the disk performance was a lowly 0.1%, as I expected, as there is only one audio track.

I am going to create another test project, but with only one instance of Rapture, and see what happens.

Anyway, back onto the Q-C. I have put together quite a detailed description of my laptop, including all of the different audio device buffer sizes and associated latencies. Probably too much info actually... An interesting thing to note is that in my last post I said that I was getting a roundtrip of 11.9 milliseconds. When I was making a note of all the buffer settings and their latencies, that 11.9 milliseconds had reduced to 9.8 milliseconds, a difference of 2 milliseconds. The only thing that I can think of is that I realised yesterday that there was an updated driver available for the Q-C, so I duly updated it.

Regarding the other areas of interest, that is, mic pre's, hi-z, line input signals and stuff... I've yet to get onto that, but will do in the next couple of days. I'll be frank... I'm more of a synth person, and I don't do much real instrument recording for my own material. I do intend to address that, however, and I'll be incorporating more guitar into my compositions. I only hope that my fifty two year old ears can still tell if what I am listening to is any good :)

Here is all the gumf:-

Laptop Specification:-
CLEVO Model = P150EM
Chassis & Display = 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) = Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3820QM (2.70GHz) 8MB cache
Memory (RAM) = 16GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card = NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Hard Disk = 120GB Intel® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk = 240GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Internal Sound Card = Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack (REALTEK)
Network Facilities = GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options = 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire = 1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT

Some more chipset info:-
ACPI x64 based PC
3rd Gen Intel® Core™ CPUs
Intel® HM77 Express Chipset
Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v2

External Sound Card = Roland QUAD-CAPTURE UA-55

Device Settings and Latency:-

Buffer Size = 1 (0.7ms, 32 samples)
Input = 1.8ms, 80 samples
Output = 3.3ms, 145 samples
Roundtrip = 5.1ms, 225 samples

Buffer Size = 2 (1.1ms, 48 samples)
Input = 2.2ms, 96 samples
Output = 4.3ms, 191 samples
Roundtrip = 6.5ms, 287 samples

Buffer Size = 3 (1.5ms, 64 samples)
Input = 2.5ms, 112 samples
Output = 5.1ms, 224 samples
Roundtrip = 7.6ms, 336 samples

Buffer Size = 4 (2.2ms, 96 samples)
Input = 3.3ms, 144 samples
Output = 6.6ms, 290 samples
Roundtrip = 9.8ms, 434 samples

Buffer Size = 5 (2.9ms, 128 samples)
Input = 4.0ms, 176 samples
Output = 8.1ms, 356 samples
Roundtrip = 12.1ms, 532 samples

Buffer Size = 6 (5.8ms, 256 samples)
Input = 6.9ms, 304 samples
Output = 13.8ms, 610 samples
Roundtrip = 20.7ms, 914 samples

Buffer Size = 7 (11.6ms, 512 samples)
Input = 12.7ms, 560 samples
Output = 25.3ms, 1117 samples
Roundtrip = 38.0ms, 1677 samples

Buffer Size = 8 (23.2ms, 1024 samples)
Input = 24.3ms, 1072 samples
Output = 48.6ms, 2142 samples
Roundtrip = 72.9ms, 3214 samples

Buffer Size = 9 (46.4ms, 2048 samples)
Input = 47.5ms, 2096 samples
Output = 95.1ms, 4193 samples
Roundtrip = 142.6ms, 6289 samples



edit - on reading this through I realise that I should really take the whole of this into its own topic, assuming anyone thinks it is worthwhile... it just appears to totally take over Beeps original topic, apologies for that. I will edit this out if requested.

Hiya, synkrotron. Although I think you probably should start a new thread (possibly in the computers tab but I guess the X1 tab works too seeing as how your issues seem to start with Rapture) to get some ideas as to how to troubleshoot your issues I appreciate you dropping that here. I truly was curious as to the latency values of the QC. Looks to me like it is only slightly faster than the 18i6. Weird. I thought it would get much better results. To me your computer specs look great so I have no idea what could be causing the crashes (but I'm not an expert so hopefully one of the smarter folks here can help). You say Rapture seems to be causing this? I think that is the program that a lot of people were having problems with after they installed the Filmscore pack. Do you have that installed? If so there were a few threads on the topic a couple weeks back you might want to look into. Anyway if it keeps up and you can't get an answer here on the forum you might want to consider getting a hold of Cakewalk support because that is absolutely not right. Have you done an audio optimization for your system? Thanks for taking the time to type all that up. Cheers!

yeah, I think you're right Beep, that I should start a new thread, or even two. I need to do some more tests in a project with just one instance of Rapture, for starters, and if I continue to have issues than I will raise a thread, in the appropriate sub forum. I don't have the Filmscore pack, but I did pay £14.99 to upgrade from LE to a full license, so I would like to see it working properly.

I will probably post some of the above as a new thread in the hardware forum, so that prospective buyers of the QUAD-CAPTURE can pour over the number. And I still need to "review" its audio recording capabilities.

Regarding Audio Optimization... yeah... I did do that, but I am wondering if I should do it again, considering my recent problem, and the fact that I updated the QUAD-CAPTURE driver.

@beepster, not sure if you guys are still on this forum yet, but i just got an 18i6 and hooked it up to my mac (osx running logic 9.1), and am getting a very low input level when connecting my roland vdrum kit via any input (line 3-8 in the back, or line/mic 1/2 in the front). if i crank the volume over 50% i am able to hear the audio, but the input level is extremely low. i looked at mixcontrol and everything appears to be correct, and the level out of the roland kit is at full volume. also i'm getting a hum on inputs 7&8 in the back, no clue why that would happen. any ideas?