Totally get you, was in music school playing piano for 12 years and then by myself.. when you are so conditioned by what happens from your action to sound-reaction is difficult to adapt. If there are more than 10-12 ms of real roundtrip, I tend to "chase" the sound in a sense - waiting for it to come out (the brain does it). Imagine what this does to my playing..

For guitar players I think it's the same, if not worse. That friend of mine I mentioned - he is a pro. I bet it's in his DNA what happens/ how it feels /w that Marshall behind, monitors in front on stage (never really asked him, how he recorded the stuff in studio).

So for me, building a new comp will be all about latency (or real ms roundtrip) ...ammm, and CG capability.

 

@MMJ2017

Thread hijack...

Whoa, looks freaking amazing. Dialing it down to low watts is convenient when you don't need all that air pushing sound to the back of a venue. I wish that I had the propensity to build things like that, I envy the ones who can.

What I have right now is a Vox AC15C1 that is way too much amp for me right now as I am not playing out and don't forsee myself doing so any time soon. Fairly soonish I will sell it, get rid of a bunch of guitars and buy a Mesa Express 5:25 or Mark Five 25. I used a Mark IV with a 4x10 cab for years and miss the Boogie thing. With either of these two I can roll down the wattage to record or lett'em rip if I ever play any gigs again. Power attenuators mess up the sound and these amps as well as others don't, letting all the tube goodness and moving speakers sing like the sweet things that they are.

 

I measure 5ms roundtrip ( usb interface)
on my system it dont bother me at all.
that with i7 6700k skylake

 

4.2ms roundtrip in Reaper with requested buffer size 128,
running hackintosh (OSX El Capitan) RME HDSPe AIO pciex audio interface, cpu is i7-5820K at 4.3GHz,
I could go 2.7ms roundtrip with requested buffer size 64, but it's not 100% reliable anymore

 

Guys, you're comparing PCI-E and USB interface speeds... plus the latency of whatever converters there are in the interfaces you have. Not much to do with CPUs here.

 

Audio interface manufacturers really need to revisit focusing on selling PCIe interfaces with breakout cables to a box. When ASIO became a thing - a while back - the latency problem was easier to deal with using an actual card installed into the mobo. I use RME FF800 (firewire) - it's still incredible! But, I also have an i7 4770 machine w/ PCI slot in 'Studio B' (lol) and am going to buy an older RME HDSP card for vsti production only. I checked, and the latest driver update for it is bundled with some newer RME interface releases, which means that it's still supported, and for WIN 10 too!!! For the RME PCIe cards that do not include a breakout box, you'll need a preamp or two, and recommended external ADDA.

You can NEVER go wrong with German engineering, and RME is the best imo for hybrid VSTi performance and audio recording. Even their USB boxes smoke everything else. imho.

I've got a Mark 5:25 - it sounds great - highly recommended. I recently picked up an Orange Micro Dark, and it's freaking incredible going through an Avatar cab w/ 12" Eminence Red White & Blue and also sounds good through a 10" Eminence Red Fang RF10C using a Godin Classic CT with Kent Armstrong P90s!!! The Orange MD has an effects loop too!! Gonna mic that b**** up!!!! The Bogner ATMA is no slouch either.

I've had amp GAS for the past 2 months........got a VHT Special 20/12 for $300 brand new. You can switch out the power tubes for 6L6, EL84, etc... great for using as a pedal platform, but I'll be experimenting with that a bit later. Just an incredible deal for $300 though!

.....sorry, now back to regular scheduled op discussion....

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2017

@bluerover I have a separate recording rig, which consists of TWO RME Fireface 802 (usb, they are recognized as one huge 60in/60out ASIO interface), RME Octamic D (via ADAT), SPL Goldmike and some other gear and I can assure you there is no "need" to go PCIex/USB3/Thunderbolt unless you'd need more channels of I/O,
and yea, RME quality and support for drivers is amazing, they still practically fully support WindowsXP and Vista, TotalMix FX is best zero-latency mixer I have ever seen, only real downside is the price (but hey, people are continuously selling the older ones, and there's usually nothing to get damaged),
btw absolutely best latency of all audio interfaces I've experienced has RME HDSPe AES (which is quite obvious, because it's digital-only interface, so no AD or DA conversion caused delay)

 

If you dont have a powerful enough main system, then you wont be able to run lowest possible latency with your daw.
it is only with this brand new i7 6700k system with ddr4 and all ssd ,I built,that i have been able to run a full mix with all plugs etc. while using my interface lowest latency with no hiccups