My keys setup is more demanding than my guitar setup and I can easily run guitar at 128. A guest player, who knows little of this kind of tech, strictly real amps and pedals, asked if there was ‘some kind of delay’ when playing through my rig a couple of days back. I have no doubt he was feeling it at a buffer of 256.
I didn’t say what I was doing, dropped the buffer to 128 and he was immediately happy.
It’s certainly more tolerable to have a few MS more on keys than guitar. Got me wondering whether there is any way to address the buffer size via a binding.
Is this feasible?
I never notice higher delays on keyboards, and I surmise that is because I am playing to a click/backing generated inside Cantabile, so I am playing against what I hear.
I am not using Cantabile to process real time audio inputs
I have been dropping the buffer down to 128 lately specifically to play the Rhodes plugins and have found the “feel” a lot punchier and more like a real Rhodes.
And therein lies the difference. One definitely feels it on guitar,
It’s not the kind of setting I feel like like futzing around with in a live situation, which is why I’m interested in knowing whether a specific buffer setting could be invoked on song load.
I know there’s only a few ms in it, but I definitely feel more connected on piano parts when the buffer is at 128, to the point that I think it would be pretty easy to identify on a blind test.
It’s a drag that one sets the buffer for safety, and that means the most demanding songs dictate the responsiveness of the entire set.
Whether it’s detectable by every player is not particularly the question here.
The question is whether something I could invoke manually can be automated to adjust on song load.
Closest I can get is to have a binding open the options window - which would at least force me to change the setting, and give a me a useful power cycle.
Be great if there could be an indexed invocation of the desired buffer setting.
I’m no coder but this might require a script invoked by Cantabile. Maybe Torsten or one fo the other experts can chime in on this.
A few more random thoughts:
-As a guitar player I play better when I’m under around 8ms or so. I used to gig around 15ms and eventually learned to play ahead of the beat a bit, but it still drove me crazy. I decided I’d had enough and built a new rig.
-I know budget is always a concern, but a better interface would solve the issue, as you’re probably aware. I’m a fan of my Presonus Quantum 2626, I get down to around 4ms IIRC, and I run at 44.1/64. In fact I have 2, and 2 NUC 12’s, which get me that minimal latency. The NUC + Quantum run around $1500 all in, I think.
-My first song in a setlist is always the same “starter” song, with a Show note of my checklist, stuff to test, problematic songs to double check, etc. Like you, it also has several bindings, e.g. opening Midi Guitar to the correct starting preset, etc. I also have a 1K tone for the soundguy in that song, which helps to avoid lazy gain staging on their end (my peak is always about -3db from the tone, so it gives them plenty of headroom). I now go through the checklist religiously at every gig, and it’s saved my butt more times than I can count.
I’ve nominated to use ASIO4ALL as the driver on the Saffires I use. (Always preferred FireWire and every time I see a Pro24 come up, I grab it.) 2.9 ms throughput with no problems - on my guitar setup. I think it’s doing a better job than the Focusrite driver.
The keyboard rig is more demanding - and too risky to run at super low latency - but it’s still solid at around 6 ms. ASIO4ALL allows for ‘inbetwen’ buffers like 160.
I would suggest that we suffer latency because the other benefits of a virtual rig are so great - but it is a sacrifice.
For me, the test is lowering the buffer as far as possible and seeing if I can feel it. The difference in touch between a 128 and 256 buffer seems very obvious … but I’m not sure I trust the unblind test.
The guitarist who played through my rig at a 256 buffer knew straight away. I said ‘just a minute’ dropped the buffer to 128 and, without knowing what I’d done, he said ‘that’s it!’
Just got me thinking about optimizing the buffer at song level.
Yep, that’s my experience as well on 256 vs 128. I don’t feel much difference between 128 and 64, I can’t remember what it is but it’s probably only three milliseconds or so. Oddly, on my EWI I swear I can feel the difference between 64 and 128, but since that’s all MIDI that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
