Latency below 10 with Audiophile 2496

[JApthorp]

I'm running SONAR1 using an Audiophile 2496 card on a PII 350 (256mb RAM). I have the WDM driver (5.12.1.20) from M-audio. The best latecy I get is 10. Is that good? Is there a way to get it better? I recall reading a comment from a Cakewalk demo guy that said lower was possible but I don't recall where.

Thanks for the input!

[j]

10ms with a PII 350? cool............ are you using 'live input monitoring' at all? what OS?

10ms is pretty darn good . are you using the DXi stuff?

i've been using the wdm drivers for win2k as well with 2ms effective latency........and no jitter....however, i'm getting dropouts now and then, and the audio engine stops a lot.....btw, i'm using windows ME and a DELTA 66. PIII 1000Mhz, 512MB RAM.

i use a lot of live effects, which taxes the cpu....i'm hoping that M AUDIO will have some official ME drivers soon, and that SONAR will be updated.............things aren't going as smoothly as they should, methinks.

later gator,
j

[JApthorp]

Actually, I've not fiddled with it a great deal since sliding the slider over to 10ms. So far there have been no problems during regular editing. I have a session tonight so we'll see then.

SONAR does seem a bit buggy though. I had a session Saturday and it would dump every time I loaded the console view with any track set to MIDI instead of audio. Fortunately the session was only audio tracking. It's closed out at some very inopportune times. I've had to go looking for the WAV files and import them to get them back where they belong.

On a positive note, I love the ability to move the ends of audio segments in the track view. That and the channel metering in track view sold it for me. Now if it will just stay running. Details, details.

Jeff

[JApthorp]

BTW, I don't use live input monitoring (that I know of). What would that be for? I use Windows 2000.

I typically track instruments and vocals one track at a time. With each new track, I play back through my Mackie 1604 and route playback only to monitoring and record only what's coming from mic. So I do have the ability to record while playing.

When the tracking is done, I add effects then. Any glaring defects in my plan?

[j]

WINDOWS 2000 and WDM drivers seems to be the way to go for SONAR. the thing that is going to hold you back is the PII 350 since the minimum system requirement for SONAR is 400Mhz. however, this shouldn't be a big issue if you aren't using 'input monitoring'. input monitoring is a feature in SONAR for using plug ins in real time as you record audio. to enable input monitoring go to OPTIONS/AUDIO/INPUT MONITORING and highlight your card's drivers. once you've loaded a plug in as a effect on a track, and armed a track for recording you can hear the plug in in real time. however, input monitoring can cause feedback and echoing.......these are discussed in the SONAR manual...look in the index under 'input monitoring'.

if you aren't using input monitoring and just using SONAR to multitrack, you can probably get a lot done with a 350.