Hello together,
I have encountered a strange phenomenon in Ableton with my new RME Babyface Pro FS.

When choosing the buffer size, I use the options of 48 or 64 samples. I was surprised when I saw that Ableton reports a RTL of around 4 ms for 48 samples buffer, but just over 3 ms for 64 samples.
Reason: the output latency reported by Ableton is almost 1ms higher for the smaller buffer.

Is this a known phenomenon?
Is Ableton messing up the RTL figures?

When measuring using RTL Utility I always had both sample sizes at around 3ms and the lower the buffer the lower the measured latency.
I should say, that I am using an old laptop and will only get my audio-pc in a few months. Also I use the babyface without external power supply.

Very curious if there's an answer to this.

Cheers

 

A buffer setting of 48 or 64 is ultra-low and the realtime processing demands may be too taxing for your CPU. Try 256 or 512, however they still might be too low. 1024 is workable for me so try that as well. If you don't need to record live audio you can change your buffer to 2048 though to give your CPU more headroom.

 

So that might affect output latency? I was hoping something like this... I mean I will be getting a new pc anyways it would just be reassuring as the whole use for me is real time recording. I am also just very interested in how this is happening

 

Btw i can use 64 samples almost without Problems so thats what I do in the meantime. And its fast. But I still feel a liiittle latency. And so I am hoping for those last few improvements.

 

I'm surprised you're getting problematic latency with a 64 sample buffer setting. Are we talking about a latency offset? IE are things not lining up properly in Live during playback or are you hearing latency when recording? The preferences in Live let you adjust the latency offset so if you see a latency value you can make an adjustment to set offset to 0 enabling everything to play on-time.

I would also definitely try with the power supply connected as well.

My apologies if I'm misunderstanding!

 

Maybe it's a side effect of overloading your CPU, but that's just guessing.
My older Babyface scales perfectly down with Reaper.

Out of curiosity, is this different for headphones and monitors?

 

@No Avenger I was just using headphones. So it wasnt the air distance from the speakers. Its also not an audible latency but more in the feel when playing. Playing does not feel as sharp but rather like a little bit muddy, slowish, like i just lost a little bit of attack compared to playing the e-piano itself.

I will have to get a power supply anyways. So I will now sooner rather than later. The overloading cpu hypothesis was also my direction of thinking.

@KungPaoFist The problem is not with the 64 buffer but with the 48 one. There the output latency (only the one reported in ableton, its hard to really discern by playing and feel) rises compared to the 64 buffer when it should in fact diminish.

all in all to me its quite an interesting thing