twaddle


Glad I found this post but I'm still in the dark.
I'm getting appalling latency that's well over the 16000 line.
I wish the latency checker would tell me which devices were the worst (or main offenders) I've tried disabling lots of things but 
still no chance and I'm getting awful clicks and pops that are making sonar almost unusable right now.
Are there any better programs that DPC Latency Checker that give more info as to what is causing the problem?

Steve 

Hi Steve,this one pinpoints to which drivers,etc are the worst offenders,instead of just freaking one out,with red bars,and such.http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon 
Bob

Just in case anyone's using Windows 8, we should note that DPC Latency Checker is not compatible with W8. It reports incorrect values that makes W8 appear to have worse latency than previous Windows versions. LatencyMon, the tool linked to above, is purportedly compatible with Windows 8 (but not XP). You will need the latest version, though, as W8 compatibility has only recently been added.

Jim, wow, I'll have to do some digging then, to get that low anyway. Generally speaking, before I decided to use the DPC latency checker, my DAW has been fine and I've had over twenty different soft synths all running at the same time, which includes Absynth with some CPU hungry granular effects. I was only using the checker out of curiosity really.

Hi Sync,

FWIW, You won't get a laptop (especially not off-the-shelf) anywhere close to the 2-8 uSec average.  

Bitflipper,


It's beyond me why anyone wants to go to Windows 8.  What I see is another Windows Vista in the making.  I've been in the IT business for 40 years, dealt with Microsoft products going back to the first Windows OS and have seen it all!  Man, people want to embrace Windows 8 when SONAR X2 hasn't even been fully regression tested on Windows 7.  And I thought I was a "bleeding edge" person.  Wow, hope everyone likes the new Metro UI.  Windows 9 anyone?   

bitflipper


Just in case anyone's using Windows 8, we should note that DPC Latency Checker is not compatible with W8. It reports incorrect values that makes W8 appear to have worse latency than previous Windows versions. LatencyMon, the tool linked to above, is purportedly compatible with Windows 8 (but not XP). You will need the latest version, though, as W8 compatibility has only recently been added.

bitflipper,


Question for you.  If my Mixing Latency section is grayed out (currently reporting 4.4ms @ 192 samples), it seems that my ASIO US-1800 64-bit driver is preventing any changes in this area.  Not much I can do or do you have any suggestions? I'm also very confused on why my Recording Latency Adjustment (samples) section is showing my Blackmagic Audio card when it isn't even selected under devices.  When I use the dropdown and pick my US-1800, it doesn't hold the setting.

bitflipper

the question is, is this okay?

It's OK if you're able to do what you want to do without hearing dropouts, regardless of what the tool shows you. As long as the DPC latency is significantly less than the time it takes to fill your audio buffers, it probably won't interfere with your computer's ability to maintain a continuous audio data stream.


Example: your ASIO buffer size is 64 samples. If you're working at 44.1KHz, it takes 1.45ms to fill a buffer (0.0227ms per sample, times 64). (At a sample rate of 96Khz, it takes only 0.666ms to fill a buffer which reduces latency but also gives your CPU less time between buffer cycles to do its thing). If your DPC latency is really bad, say 4ms (which can happen) there is no way the CPU can do what it needs to do to the data. Not when it's getting handed a fresh set of data every 1.45ms!

But if, say, your buffer size is 2048 samples (which is what I use when mixing), at 44.1KHz the CPU has a whopping 46.5ms between buffer cycles, giving it plenty of time to process the data. (My DPC latency is typically under 20us.)

Your worst reading with DPC Latency Checker was 833us, or 0.833ms. That means the CPU would lose that much time out of the 1.45ms (1,455us) it's been allotted to process data in. The CPU therefore only has 0.722ms to get it all done (not only processing your audio but also managing all background tasks and driver overhead). 

Whether or not that's enough time depends on how many tasks the CPU has to perform in 722us. On a lean, optimized DAW it's probably more than adequate. 

One other important note...running DPC Latency Checker while SONAR is open will not yield useful measurements, because you'll be seeing SONAR's own DPC overhead included in the results.

Hi Jim, yeah, I know, and this is the first time I've used a laptop for my DAW. In the past I've always custom built my own desktop with the quietest fans and all that jazz.

But this time I fancied becoming mobile. Most of my work now is soft synth based so I'm doing everything pretty much in the box. I'm finding the new found freedom to be a real positive move for me. I had got to the point where I couldn't be bothered going into my "studio."

I did some homework too and my laptop is based on a CLEVO P150 and has been built to a specification, to within limits, and is classed as a "high spec gaming machine." I upgraded to the next to best CPU at the time, put 16gb of RAM in and replaced the HDs with SSDs. And it is all intel based which I'm hoping it a plus too.

Thanks for you input Jim, it is appreciated :-)

Hi, Harpman. I'm an old-timer, too, predating not just Windows but also PCs and Macs. Having watched the evolution of hardware, software and the industry all those years gives you a sense of perspective, doesn't it? Like me, you've seen way too many "innovations" that ultimately didn't deliver, eventually revealed to have been purely marketing inventions.

I don't know if Vista is the best analogy for W8, though. I'm thinking more Windows ME.

Regarding not being able to get below 192 samples...the Mixing Latency adjustments are always disabled when using ASIO, since those settings can only be changed via the ASIO control panel. It's entirely possible the driver either has a hard-coded limitation (every interface has a lower limit that they offer as an option, although 32 or 64 are more common minimum values) or has determined for some other reason that 192 samples is the lowest you can go. However, it should be noted that 192 samples is still pretty durn quick (~ 4.3ms) and should be acceptable for most recording tasks.

I would agree with the Windows ME vs W8 comparison . I have some very useful information to pass along.  My RT (Round Trip) latency on my TASCAM US-1800 is 15ms. According to Cakewalk support, should be <10ms.  Decided to try something.  I set my US-1800 to "lowest latency" in Windows control panel and started SONAR.  In task manager, I set the priority of SONARPDR.exe to "Realtime" and started my track "Sample Jodi Good - Where Did We Go Wrong". Instead of getting a hang or how Cakewalk Support put it, "The motorboat sound", I would get a "Drop-out" pop-up box.  I started with an I/O buffer of 256K (Default), tried increasing to 512K or decreasing it to 128K with the same results. I noticed that you said yours was at 2048, so I set mine to 2048 and the frequency of the hang reduced substantially (looped the track indefinitely and the hang went from once per loop to once in 5 loops).  I did notice that the memory footprint for SONARPDR.exe jumped from 800K to 1.2M.  Not an issue for me since I have 16GB DDR3.  What's weird is that Cakewalk Support doesn't recommend setting the I/O buffer over 1024MB.  For those of you who are "Old School" like me an Bitflipper, the best analogy I can draw is remembering the days of burning CD's when the CD writer would empty the buffer before it could be back filled and the CD burning process would crash (I threw away a lot of CD's back then and they weren't cheap ).  Since I want to use SONAR X2 in a "Live" gig scenario, I can't live with 15ms RT.  May have to look into the Roland OCTA-CAPTURE.  Does anyone have any reported RT times with this device?

bitflipper


Hi, Harpman. I'm an old-timer, too, predating not just Windows but also PCs and Macs. Having watched the evolution of hardware, software and the industry all those years gives you a sense of perspective, doesn't it? Like me, you've seen way too many "innovations" that ultimately didn't deliver, eventually revealed to have been purely marketing inventions.

I don't know if Vista is the best analogy for W8, though. I'm thinking more Windows ME.

Regarding not being able to get below 192 samples...the Mixing Latency adjustments are always disabled when using ASIO, since those settings can only be changed via the ASIO control panel. It's entirely possible the driver either has a hard-coded limitation (every interface has a lower limit that they offer as an option, although 32 or 64 are more common minimum values) or has determined for some other reason that 192 samples is the lowest you can go. However, it should be noted that 192 samples is still pretty durn quick (~ 4.3ms) and should be acceptable for most recording tasks.

Gio,

I have a QUAD-CAPTURE which is the little brother of the OCTA-CAPTURE and I am currently running in ASIO mode with an Audio Buffer Size = 4. This gives me an input latency of 3.3 milliseconds (144 samples), and output latency of 6.6 milliseconds (290 samples) and a roundtrip of 9.8 milliseconds (434 samples).


I've run a lower latencies than this but I start getting dropouts. I'm finding that I'm able to live with 10 milliseconds 


cheers


andy