Dumb question about latency

[NicholasDWolfwood]

Okay. This might be a really stupid question, but what exactly does ASIO latency effect?

For example, anything less than 5ms for me produces that horrid warbling. Does this only effect playback, or does this effect my recorded input as well? I haven't had a chance to mess with it in the last few days, as I just got my system up-and-running again.

So, does this only effect playback, or does it effect recording as well? And if it effects playback, would it effect rendering the project too? Or what's the deal?

For example, when I had it set to like 50ms, anything I recorded would be off from my midi drum track, by at least a second. Would that change if I lowered the latency, or just rendered it?

 

[TheWinterSnow]

ASIO latency is the time you allow the computer to process information beyond the actaul time the computer does. Which means that it will record your instuments on time, it is delaying the playback due to effects or virtual instuments, since these take up a lot of computing power if your computer can't handle supplying the playback at a certain time, you lower the latency until it can.

having the latency set so low that you are hearing artifacts is only an annoyance and creates DAW instability (crashes). The best was to set latency is the fastest (or lowest) latency possible beofre you start getting artifacts, and overruns (oversampling). This only effects playback however and not rendering for audio tracks, however in my experience if you have a virtual instrument and the latency is causing artifacts, they will show up in the rendered file.

When you have your latency sert to high what happens is the input being recorded is done so in real time with no lag, however if you are playing along to the playback, you are waiting for the track to be played, therefore when you play the tracks back after you recorded, it sound like your last recording was way late. If you have computer problems the best all around latency is 20ms, you start noticing a bit of lag if say you are using direct monitoring or are playing a keyboard connected to a virtual synth, but again its more than fast enough and won't tax your PC too much. If I am doing all Audio tracks I can go down to 4ms beofre overruns occur and I get dropout, but every computer will be different you have to find the lowest latency possible before it starts acting wierd.

I will note, ASIO4ALL was better in performance than the stock ASIO drivers that came with my soundcard, with the stock drivers with audio only I could only get to about 15ms, with ASIO4ALL, I am able to get down to 4ms, so its worth checking out.

 

[NicholasDWolfwood]

well I'm going to try it now and see what happens, since I did just jump to a q8200 with 4gb of ram. I'll test tomorrow and see what happens. but with the creative drivers I got down to 5ms on my old system before it started artifacting. who knows, maybe it wont artifact at all anymore.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Creative Drivers? You using a Creative or E-MU? I will tell you that creative cards are just overglorified stock onboard soundcards adnt their E-MU line is their set of cards desinged for recording, though mine has been unstable as hell. As expensive as the creative cards are, they are a rip off if you don't plan on using a logitech suround sound system to play games with and then again most new motherboards have hi-def for 5 and 7 channel sourround which makes just abpout all the creative cards overpriced since the sound quality is the same.

Problem is that the creative cards don't have their own Processor which means that the information has to be sent to your CPU and then back and that time creates latency and hogs up CPU resources. And their ASIO drivers are only to be able to have multiple channels of audio going through the WME (widnows audio driver) and not for performance. You can update the drivers and get better performance, but in my expeirence any device without a DSP won't get you very far in the musc recording domain.

 

[NicholasDWolfwood]

I'm running an audigy2 with modded drivers so it shows up as an audigy4. yes it's an old soundcard, this is the third consecutive system I've had it in so far (I believe I got it around 5 years ago). I actually do have a 6.1 logitech system that I use for gaming and movies.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Wasn't really made for recording. The ADA connverteres weren't made for audio recording outside podcasts. Since it doens't have a DSP you won't be seeing a decent latency. You can either learn to live with it or get something desinged for recording. As I said earlier the Creative E-MU line is the next step up in quality and is deisnged for recording. I have the 1212m which at the time was a $200+ card and last time I saw the price it was a mere $130. Not the greatest but it gets the job done, plus you can keep your audigy in your system and designate that for games and movies when you want 6.1.