Hey,

Spoiler: Specifics

I have been doing some music with my m-audio fast track pro audio-interface for a while now and I am ready to take the next steps towards minimum latency. Now I searched and did not find any explanations as to how the audio-interface influences latency or what audio-interface to buy in order to get minimum latency.

I know I can compute the latency by dividing the reported latency in samples by samples per second, but appearantly some Interfaces do not report the true latency but just part of it and oftentimes the shops do not say how low the latency can be set on the specific audio-interface in question.

As I understand it, the computer is responsible for being fast enough to work through all necessary requests in time in order not to get pops and cracking sounds. But the audio-interface is the device that detemines the speed the computer has to keep up with. Is that right?

With my interface I can set the latency to a minimum of 64 samples at 44000 samples/s. Now I don't know if that is the actual roundway latency but for playing it is just a bit too slow for me. It might not be audible, but the keys of my piano feel different when playing through the DAW, they don't feel as responsive...

I imagine this would be even worse for drum players, but as there seem to be a lot of them playing through superior drummer I have a hunch that it is possible to achieve really low latencies. Is there a drummer that can confirm that?

I am thankful for every insight on how I can achieve really low latency and how 'playable' this result might be (for dummers?). I do not want to use monitoring functions of the interface but play through vsts. If you have 'perfect' latency, can you maybe tell me your setup?

Thanks a lot

 

Last edited: May 4, 2019

Actual latency is the sum of these factors, take this as an inspirational list to do some further research:
Latency is highly influenced by driver CPU efficiency, software instrument CPU requirements and mainly the single-core CPU performance of your machine (given that you have a modern CPU with at least 4 cores).

• The latency of your keyboard or drum-to-MIDI interface
• The latency of your MIDI interface and its driver
• The processing latency of your instrument (in your case, drum sampler)
• The audio buffer setting in your DAW
• The audio driver latency
• The priorities your audio/midi drivers and DAW plus instruments is given by your OS

In my experience, the key to low latency is mainly the right choice of drivers which often means using a certain audio/MIDI interface, and the right choice of instruments and instrument settings.
Some latency-influencing settings are not too obvious, like e.g. the anti-aliasing-filter quality in Kontakt.
The lower you set the quality, the lower you can go with output audio driver latency, which is a tradeoff naturally.

Some drivers have separate buffer settings so check both for these and the DAW buffer setting.

 

• Use direct monitoring (no latency) if your audio interface supports it.
• Use dedicated ASIO drivers from the manufacturer of your audio interface.
• Lower your audio interface buffer (one value above where it cracks up, if it cracks up).
• Work at higher sample rate in your DAW. 48kHz gives less latecy than 44.1kHz, for example.

And do not use any plugins (that will add latency) on your channels, groups and/or master channel while recording. Some people tend to forget that they loaded DSP heavy plugins on the master and they wonder why they have latency.

 

Last edited: May 4, 2019

presonus itwo -> studio one 4 = zero latency with plugins !!

 

all of the above!

just wanna add to keep in mind that latency is changing over time within your project.

if you´d need to change some parts later and re-record drums (for example) most likely you will have
bigger latency depending on all the vst´s you´ve added in the meantime...

 

Windows 10, Thunderbolt, Presonus Quantum. Find a motherboard with native thunderbolt like for example:
Gigabyte Z390 DESIGNARE
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-DESIGNARE-rev-10#kf

And a nice CPU is always a plus, like:
Intel Core i9-9900K
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i9-9900K-Desktop-Processor-Unlocked/dp/B005404P9I

A full system with audio interface gonna cost you around $2,500 plus plus

 

Last edited: May 4, 2019

Thats very "simple" to ansver - buy quality hardware from the start (you get what you pay for)
Search the net to see reviews and such, use a lot of time on it

I have a great asus motherboard with some quality ram and a nice rme 802

Quality from the start

 

Short cables? Use 88k, will halve latency of 44k (as suggested earlier). Use 192 to better than halve it again.

I imagine spending more gets diminishing returns. It surely only needs to be 'good enough'.

Recording drums might be better done on a separate PC to that which is playing any accompaniment (reducing overhead on/for drum recording). Use MIDI kit with zero/low latency monitoring.

Sit closer to the speakers? :D

 

In my case, this is what i've been doing wrong

 

In my experience, when I need to record live instruments on a project that's heavy with both vsts and vstis, I find it also helpful to freeze tracks that have a lot of plugins (especially with plugins that are known to consume a bit more cpu). Another work around for me is to bounce the tracks that I only need to serve as a track guide, import them on a new project and record my live instruments. After, I go copy the recorded tracks (along with any plugins applied to it) and just paste/drop them back in the main project. I try to lower the buffer as much as I can only when recording and then just raise it back again whenever I'm in the mixing phase of the project. These might not be the ideal way of doing it, but for what it's worth I hope it helps.

 

Everyone has to it this way. I never bounce tracks only freeze them. That being said you can gain a lot milliseconds with good hardware. But everybody has a sweetspot due to limitations in the technology
I dream of one setting does it all in a couple of years. Maybe buffer size 64 with 96Khz and you can put as many tracks and as many heavy plugins you want without pops and clicks. ...

 

After disabling my inboard Audio controller, overclocking my machine, i'm able to use my soundcard @32buffer with 4ms roundtrip, i use it to play my guitar with this, and it is relatively stable.

also one last thing to mention, i you have a Studio machine, always get an AMD graphic card.

 

Nope Nvidia works perfectly fine thanks you. By the way I don't wanna brag but on buffer size 32 with 96KHz my overall latency is 1.33ms. I can record live vocals and instruments without clicks and pops when freezing other tracks. My standard settings for live recordings is buffer size 64 with 96khz, then overall latency is 1.67ms then I can even have a light plugin on without clicks and pops

 

Last edited: May 4, 2019

Wow, thanks so much for the responses. Ideally this can become a spot where latency-topics are being discussed

@Daskeladden under 2ms seconds roundtrip latency sounds really good! Could those of you that have achieved latencies like that share your hardware specs (including interface)? I hope to be able to avoid copying Daskeladdens setup as it seems quite expensive.

Also if latency is driver-dependent - what audio-interfaces that don't cost as much as a computer can you guys recommend?

I saw a youtube-video once where someone claimed he did not like the sounds of his roland e-drumset so he just plays through superior drummer. If that was possible without destroying the feel of playing the drums I might just not get a korg kronos which I am almost planning, but just get better computer-hardware and play through vstis. So is there any pianist/drummer that is used to a real instrument and still enjoys 'just playing' through vstis?

 

Last edited: May 4, 2019

1.33 is that input output or roundtrip ?
also Nvidia always intrudouces lags, and it taxes the computer more than AMD's drivers.

check LatencyMon, https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

Roundtrip and overall is the same. Input + Output latency = Overall/roundtrip latency
I have latencymon and Nvidia works perfectly fine. One important thing to do is to change the settings to: Prefered Maximum Performance, in Nvidia control panel

 

edit:
double post