I’m disappointed in the latency coming out of the system. While it reports 5 ms of latency, but it appears (feels ???) much greater - like closer to 30 ms.
My system:
- Windows 10 (1703)
- Yamaha MOXF8 (MIDI and Audio)
- 192 samples (128 samples glitches heavily)
- Lenovo X1 Carbon, 8 gigs RAM, i7 200 ghz CPU
Two questions:
- Is there a minimum amount of latency that affects USB interfaces?
- Has anyone else seem similar latency strangeness (a latency value being significantly lower than actual latency)?
Pat
Hi Pat,
latencies of course depend on the number and sort of plugs you use. In my setup (sometimes really heavy load) I use a buffer of 256 samples and am quite happy with it (soundcard: RME babyface / to be precise: there is a small additional pre-buffer - as far as I remember 32 samples - inside babyface, so all in all 288 samples).
Most probably babyface would do the job with down to 128 (160) samples but for me stability was prior to lowest latencies. Please keep in mind that the babyface USB interface is sort of special and most probably one of the ones around with lowest latencies.
Afaik most USB soundcards are still USB 2. So I think your 192 samples are pretty good. If you still have a feeling of beeing more 30 than 5 ms there is probably something else going on (5ms is the time an acoustic wave needs for a distance of about 1,7 meters - this should not really be noticable).
Regards, humphrey
You’re using the MOXF as an audio interface? It probably was meant more for backing track playback than low latency performance. 192 samples doesn’t really say much, in itself it’s just under 5ms latency but that’s just the ASIO buffer. There’s the DA conversion to consider too (at LEAST a millisecond in most interfaces, usually more) and the (hidden) safety buffer. In many interfaces this is at least as much as the ASIO buffer and in a device not meant for low latency performance specifically it might be more.
The lowest total roundtrip latency I can get on my RME Fireface UCX is around 5ms, including everything. That’s at 48 samples, and as far as I’m aware that’s one of the best performing interfaces on the market.
FWIW, you don’t necessarily need the fastest processor on the planet to get low latency - what you need is a soundcard with a very good driver and a well tuned system. You can try LatencyMon to see if there’s anything you can do to improve performance of your MOXF at 128 samples, for a start.
I use the MOXF8 as my interface as well, with pretty good luck. Remember, the 5 ms is only on the output. The input delay is about 7 ms. I believe I’m running at 128 samples, and Guitar Rig 5 is very responsive (when it isn’t crashing Cantabile).
The problem with USB as an interface is that it transmits data in packets rather than a constant stream. FireWire is more responsive, and some interfaces use custom hardware. It’s really too bad FireWire died out. I have a Presonus Fire Studio 8 channel interface I can’t use anymore, but out beats the hell out of any USB interface I’ve played with.