RME FireFace 800 latency during monitoring?

[Ground Up Studios]

How can I get rid of this? It records on time, but if I monitor it (whether it's with headphones or from the speakers) it has latency issues. I have an RME Fireface 800 running on cubase through windows 7. All the drivers are updated.

 

[jipchen]

Wait, did you switch off software monitoring in Cubase? The FF800 built in monitoring through TotalMix is always (near) zero-latency monitoring. Have you tried deinstalling the drivers (and deleting all old preference files etc) and re-installing them. Also make sure you have the latest firmware. It worked fine for me on XP 32bit, W7 32 bit and OS X 10.6.

 

[Ground Up Studios]

Well I turned down the monitoring in total mix and pressed the monitoring button in cubase. This way, the vocalist could hear himself with the effects instead of a dry voice. And it's also the same when I try to connect my pod, either through analog or unbalanced inputs.

 

[Pekka Posio]

Sounds like you have too high buffer setting in cubase. It's the software that creates the latency, not Fireface.

I don't know about cubase, but it's called something like "playback buffer"/"buffer size". Scroll through your prefences and playback engine setup and you should find it. Make it 64 or 128 samples and try again if you hear the latency.

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If I remember right, Fireface has fixed point buffer sizes, you need to go to Fireface settings (the screen where you can power on phantom 48v and stuff), and find the buffer size switch. Bigger buffer sizes increases the stability and maximum plugin count. If you make buffer too low in big sessions with many plugin, you might hear crackles and pops.

 

[Ground Up Studios]

Wait so am I suppose to decrease the buffer size? Because when I'm in cubase and I go to device setup, the buffer settings are there. I noticed that it says 150??? Lol but Everytime I lower it, it gets worse!!

 

[Ground Up Studios]

It definitely is a cubase problem because when I'm monitoring the input (through totalmix) it perfect. But when I monitor in cubase, it shits itself.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

You should use the Fireface's monitoring for the vocals and only monitor the reverb/delay from Cubase, it doesn't matter if the reverb has a slight pre-delay due to Cubase's latency, it's actually not a bad thing.

 

[Ground Up Studios]

But I actually have those type of effects as inserts on a track, not on an aux track.

 

[Pekka Posio]

Try removing all the plugins and monitor the track. Do you still have the huge latency? It might be any plugin in your vocal chain, for example most autotune plugins have horrible delay which always needs to be compensated.

 

[Ground Up Studios]

Na it's not that man. I can just monitor the di from my pod or just a dry vocal and it will still have some small latency delay

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Then either reduce the audio card buffer size as much as you can to monitor all inside Cubase (CPU will get more hungry) or use my solution with the reverb as it should be set (on aux tracks)

 

[Ground Up Studios]

It's weird because whenever I decrease the buffer size, the latency increases

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

It really shouldn't.

 

[Headof75]

Try increasing it then!?

Recording guitar direct into cubase and monitoring with an instance of Nebula running on the track I can still achieve latencies of 4ms using my Babyface. How powerful is your CPU?

 

[Ground Up Studios]

I have the buffer on the highest setting actually and it's better than when I decrease it. It's definitely a problem with cubase. I really don't know how strong my CPU is. Here are the specs of my computer


State Drive Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL9 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit (TWO 2GB Memory Modules), Danger Den 4101 Water Cooling Kit, VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 512MB, Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 ATX MotherBoard, Sony AD-7260S 24X*

SATA Internal DVD Burner, OCZ Technology ModXStream Pro 500 Watt ATX EPS12V Modular Power Supply, Sabrent 75-in-1 7-Slot USB 2.0 Internal Memory Card Reader & Writer, Core i7 860 2.8GHz Socket 1156 Processor (Over Clocked To 3.8Ghz), WITH WINDOWS*

 

[JeffTD]

By highest do you mean highest on the list or highest in value?

 

[Headof75]

With an overclocked Core i7 your latency issues should be zero...

 

[Ground Up Studios]

I'm not sure Jeff, I think it's te highest in value. It's the one where the highest is 150. I don't know how to change the buffer settings.

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

There is no "150" value for that as far as I know. It should be ... 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc... Can you take a snapshot image of that and post the image here?

 

[Ground Up Studios]

It's where u go to device setup, and where u choose your inputs and outputs. That's where it shows something that goes up to 150. Other than that I have no idea where to choose my buffer. It's cubase thats lagging, not my interface.