So if an AI can give smaller latency, than my CPU can run more things on a slower latency with the AI, than without the AI? Sorry, you guys are going to really have to drill into my thick skull.

Thank you very much for all the great answers, I love this forum, I love audio!

 

I've heard about these issues with older firmware and Win drivers, Zoom had a bad start with these, even the older Mac driver did disconnect sometimes with the pre v1.2 firmware.
I'm only using it on Mac and iOS, but have you tried the updated versions?

 

yes, both firmware and drivers are updated. I have now given up and changing to thunderbolt and Presonus Qantum

 

Thanks, good to know that there are still issues under Windows

 

First check OS...do OS clean up or reinstal and then install ssd...

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2018

One thing that might help you out like 1-5% is disabling unneeded Windows services. Gotta be careful though.

Check out this website (use the GitHub script ;)~ :

http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-10-service-configurations/

Check this out too (lol) :

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2018

No, with or without interface, the CPU will run exactly the same. Try cleaning your OS

 

More than an audio interface, your DAW could be the one to blame. After cleaning your Windows system, you might want to consider the load of your DAW. Pro Tools, for example, is resource heavy. If you are not hooked to your workflow in a DAW, Reaper is a lot more CPU friendly than anything else. I’ve also found that Audition CS6 Portable is very resource friendly.

 

Most audio applications - unlike video / games - does not take advantage of dedicated hardware.

Graphics have "shaders", a generalized low level language for computing visuals. But in audio, the heavy computations are usually done on the CPU. Technically, audio is computed in small chunks - the size of which is known as the buffer size. And the smaller buffer size you have, the more load you will get on your CPU, because it needs to recompute the buffer more often.
Latency is the buffer size measured in milliseconds, btw.

So investing in an expensive audio card will not magically turn your computer into a high-performing audio workstation. And it also won't take any load off your computer (make it faster) - on the contrary, if you want to experience fast latencies of just a few millisecond, your computer will have MORE work to do.

 

This is bullcrap. Unless your audio interface is UAD or Avid HDX, it's not doing any calculations as there is nothing capable of doing calculations in there

 

hi @aCouch, having at least a basic Audio Interface is a good idea.

what cpu do you have and what are you using currently?
ASIO4ALL ?
windows 10 ?

 

True. The little CPU difference you could gain is in the quality of the ASIO driver. Different ASIO drivers use different amount of CPU, especially at lower latencies that's important for live recordings, but since you're doing soft synths, 256 or 512 samples ASIO buffer should be enough, and there are no such big CPU differences at this kind of buffer/latency.

Baxter is usually right, so I'm surprised he would think that. The difference between the most expensive audio interface and the cheap one in CPU usage is really not that big at 256/512 and bigger ASIO buffers, and it's primarily due to how well its ASIO drivers perform.

The story about Focusrite ASIO drivers is a long one... It's somewhere on this forum. Their ASIO drivers used to be bad at first, then got better, and now they suck again. I think the v2 drivers perform the best, if I remember correctly.

 

I was ofc referring to MoBo soundcard, which use your CPU to process sound. By getting a dedicated audio interface, you offload this processing to the dedicated audio interface.
With today's tech it's probably not a noticable difference (in performance loss/win) but it sure was noticable back in the days.

Funny you'd say that. My other audio interface is an Avid HDX + HD I/O 16x16.

But the fact that MoBo soundcards use the CPU (compared to dedicated audio interfaces) still stands. It's just not as a noticable difference these days.

 

Last edited: Aug 28, 2018

As to my experience I can/have to use different latencies with different soundcards and different DAWs without getting crackles/dropouts, while the CPU stays below 80%. Just sayin'.

 

Quite interesting explanation. Thank you. One could also work at a higher sample rate. By doubling the sample rate, latency gets reduced by half because of some math I'll never understand.

 

Not too difficult.
44.1kHz sampling freq = 44100 samples per second or per 1000ms. 100 samples = 2.268ms.
88.2kHz sampling freq = 88200 samples per second or per 1000ms. 100 samples = 1.134ms.

The calculation is done on a samle basis, that's the trick.
But the CPU load will rise!

 

ASIO4ALL, Windows 10, i5-7200u, 8gb RAM, HDD 1gb

 

They don't. The processing (plugins, mixdown, samplerate conversion) all happens in your DAW, which is executed on the CPU side. If you're using any EQ, stereoization or whatever in your Realtek driver, then yes, this is also likely to be computed on the CPU, since as I've already mentioned, there's only a few soundcards (UAD, HDX) that have something that's capable of computing. That said, you should have disabled all "enhancements" in your builtin driver right away, so I treated this as something obvious.

The only thing a soundcard does (once you disable the crap) is take a N samples long buffer at regular intervals from your RAM and feed it to the DAC. No processing should be taking place - this is why all drivers freak out and stop playing at all when you feed it something at a different samplerate than it was set to - it doesn't know what to do with it since it doesn't process anything. It just detects that zeros and ones are coming way faster than they were supposed to, so it rings an alarm bell and stops everything.

 

getting an Audiointerface will not improve things for you.

your cpu has its limitations but it should not result in a slow system.
if you go overboard it crackles and thats it, just render to audio/freeze more, i guess you already do this.

you need to tame win 10, it slows down everything, this is especially bad for a daw with a lower end machine lacking an ssd.
some tasks take literally forever to finish...

boot the machine, do nothing and wait 2 min, then open task manager and take a look at what is taxing your cpu/hdd/memory

beside some third party stuff that can slow down everything, the usual suspects are this:

- windows defender real time protection
- scan & repair processes
- windows update

you have to get rid of them, at least while your working.
now the beauty of win 10 is, if you manually turn it off, it will turn shit on again by itself.
you have to do registry hacks to really turn off all this crap, there are plenty of guides available how to do this.

get rid of everything till its quite in the task manager, this will improve things for you imo.

 

That could be true 20 years ago. The most used chips on mobos (both mobile & desktop) come from the Realtek brand, these chips support up to 24bit/192khz.
For example:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=28&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=284

With the exception of DSP based interfaces like UAD or Antelope etc. that enable users to run plugins from the card's "cpu" not the comp's. In the case of Antelope, since August 1st any new interface comes with 50+ free FX.
Just a small detour from the OP which i find interesting:
I recently demo'ed a Discrete 4 (hooked on a Gigabyte Z170 TB3 equipped mobo), and honestly it has the best pre-amps i 've ever heard on a audio interface regardless price. Recorded vocals and ac.guitars, also el.gtrs. Everything sounded amazing. I then loaded a 50 tracks 24/96k project on Cubase 9.5. Latency was a staggering 1ms with their new Windows TB driver. Also their soft GUI is easily one of the best available. Antelope's FPGA plugs are not too shabby, quite usable i'd say, featuring mostly emulations of classic analog hardware. Still, a Discrete 4 goes for a "salty" 1000 euros, probably more expensive than the OP's laptop lol. A small minus factor is the plugs are not as easily usable as UAD's, some routing needs to take place before usage, but wtf, they free and run from the card. I consider this interface as the best buy for a high end card and highly recommend it to all my friends.
Cheers