Had to change buffer settings

mjbphotos

mjbphotos

Moderator
I've never had any issues with this computer & Reaper as to latency/pops-crackles. Buffer setting has been left at default 1200 since I started using it.
Yesterday, I was laying down some new tracks on an old project that was very minimal- 7 or 8 tracks, plus EZDrummer muted. As soon as I started tracking I was hearing gaps in the monitored tracks, everything was recording fine, and on playback, everything sounded fine. Continued tracking with same issues, eventually popped the buffer down to 600 and problem went away.
CPU monitor was showing minimal use, but my hard drive is about 60% full now (better than it was - it was over 80% before a lot of purging!)
 
Also, you will want to replace your HD by an SSD. I noticed a HUGE difference in overall performance of my computers (either desktops as laptops) when I did that. Not telling that this is your issue, just adding this note as a contribution.
 
mjbphotos said:
I've never had any issues with this computer & Reaper as to latency/pops-crackles. Buffer setting has been left at default 1200 since I started using it.
Yesterday, I was laying down some new tracks on an old project that was very minimal- 7 or 8 tracks, plus EZDrummer muted. As soon as I started tracking I was hearing gaps in the monitored tracks, everything was recording fine, and on playback, everything sounded fine. Continued tracking with same issues, eventually popped the buffer down to 600 and problem went away.
CPU monitor was showing minimal use, but my hard drive is about 60% full now (better than it was - it was over 80% before a lot of purging!)
Click to expand...

1200 samples buffer setting?

And yeah, I would go SSD for your OS. Do you keep projects on your main drive?
 
Remember, as your HD gets fuller the data is pushed out further on the disk, meaning it takes longer to access. After the purge and defrag, it should be better. SSD doesn't have that problem since it can access the data directly, no spinning finding, fetching assembling (if the data is fragmented).

If your OS is on a separate partition, you could just disk copy that partition to the new drive and your computer will never know the difference. Or even easier, I suggest a 480 GB SSD (or greater) and you could take all of your data, move it off to another drive. Defrag (optional), then using a disk copy utility, move everything over to the new drive and it will partition your new drive the size it needs (even if the old one is larger). The only concern you will have is that the remaining data on the old drive will fit the new drive/partition. Really, about an hour or two from end to end and no resetting stuff up. It is worth the $30 bucks for the utility (I tried it with an open source software, pay the money).
 
DM60 said:
Remember, as your HD gets fuller the data is pushed out further on the disk, meaning it takes longer to access. After the purge and defrag, it should be better. SSD doesn't have that problem since it can access the data directly, no spinning finding, fetching assembling (if the data is fragmented).

If your OS is on a separate partition, you could just disk copy that partition to the new drive and your computer will never know the difference. Or even easier, I suggest a 480 GB SSD (or greater) and you could take all of your data, move it off to another drive. Defrag (optional), then using a disk copy utility, move everything over to the new drive and it will partition your new drive the size it needs (even if the old one is larger). The only concern you will have is that the remaining data on the old drive will fit the new drive/partition. Really, about an hour or two from end to end and no resetting stuff up. It is worth the $30 bucks for the utility (I tried it with an open source software, pay the money).
Click to expand...

You're speaking Greek to me! ;)
 
DM60 said:
Remember, as your HD gets fuller the data is pushed out further on the disk, meaning it takes longer to access. After the purge and defrag, it should be better. SSD doesn't have that problem since it can access the data directly, no spinning finding, fetching assembling (if the data is fragmented).

If your OS is on a separate partition, you could just disk copy that partition to the new drive and your computer will never know the difference. Or even easier, I suggest a 480 GB SSD (or greater) and you could take all of your data, move it off to another drive. Defrag (optional), then using a disk copy utility, move everything over to the new drive and it will partition your new drive the size it needs (even if the old one is larger). The only concern you will have is that the remaining data on the old drive will fit the new drive/partition. Really, about an hour or two from end to end and no resetting stuff up. It is worth the $30 bucks for the utility (I tried it with an open source software, pay the money).
Click to expand...

And if your drive is Seagate, the utility (Acronis) is free.

BTW MJB, what is your computer exactly?
 
1200 samples is a pretty huge ASIO buffer size for tracking. I'd have to imagine that the latency that you get with that buffer size is considerable. What does Reaper report the latency to be (up in the very upper right hand corner of the main window)?

If you're using a desktop computer, adding an internal disk drive is pretty easy. Even if you don't bother with an SSD and trying to pull a switcharoo on which drive holds your Windows installation, just arranging it so that you record audio to one drive and let Windows run from another drive will make a pretty good difference in your computer's tracking abilities.
 
Tadpui said:
1200 samples is a pretty huge ASIO buffer size for tracking. I'd have to imagine that the latency that you get with that buffer size is considerable. What does Reaper report the latency to be (up in the very upper right hand corner of the main window)?
Click to expand...

I agree, huge buffer size for tracking....I can usually go to 64 on my pc, sometimes I have to raise it to 96 though, but it depends on how much shit I've got running too...

With my buffer at 64, my latency says: 3.9/5.8ms....I'm assuming the 5.8 is the actual latency (round trip)...



Tadpui said:
If you're using a desktop computer, adding an internal disk drive is pretty easy. Even if you don't bother with an SSD and trying to pull a switcharoo on which drive holds your Windows installation, just arranging it so that you record audio to one drive and let Windows run from another drive will make a pretty good difference in your computer's tracking abilities.
Click to expand...

+1

I installed an extra hdd in my pc (although this has been about 6 years ago now), & it was simple. I was worried about it at first, but it's no big deal really, if I can do this, anyone can....
 
jimmys69 said:
And if your drive is Seagate, the utility (Acronis) is free.

BTW MJB, what is your computer exactly?
Click to expand...

I was getting 11/11ms latency, but I'm always direct monitoring (with the exception of when I'm tracking a MIDI synth), so never was an issue. 1200 was (I guess) the default buffer setting, never bothered changing it! I seldom have done any more than 2 simultaneous tracks recording at one time.

Computer is many years old (6?), HP AMD A6 2.2GHz, 6G RAM, 500G HD.
 
minerman said:
I agree, huge buffer size for tracking....I can usually go to 64 on my pc, sometimes I have to raise it to 96 though, but it depends on how much shit I've got running too...

With my buffer at 64, my latency says: 3.9/5.8ms....I'm assuming the 5.8 is the actual latency (round trip)...
Click to expand...

I always thought that this display showed input/output latency. I just tried to search out what it really means and so far I've come up empty-handed. If I figure it out, I'll report back.

mjbphotos said:
I was getting 11/11ms latency, but I'm always direct monitoring (with the exception of when I'm tracking a MIDI synth), so never was an issue. 1200 was (I guess) the default buffer setting, never bothered changing it! I seldom have done any more than 2 simultaneous tracks recording at one time.

Computer is many years old (6?), HP AMD A6 2.2GHz, 6G RAM, 500G HD.
Click to expand...

Even with direct monitoring, less latency for the backing tracks is always a good thing :) You might try fiddling with it one of these days and see how small of a buffer you can get away with before you start getting pops/crackles.

I've been running with a 256 sample buffer for a while now, and my interface reports 3.0ms/3.4ms. I just bumped it down to 128 samples and now it's reporting 1.7ms/2.1ms, running at 96kHz 24-bit. I think that I've tried this buffer size before but started getting some pops and crackles. I might just let it ride and see if it happens again. Less than 4ms round trip would be great!
 
Tadpui said:
running at 96kHz 24-bit. I think that I've tried this buffer size before but started getting some pops and crackles. I might just let it ride and see if it happens again. Less than 4ms round trip would be great!
Click to expand...

I've tried to read up on this, & I know I could just try it here myself, but do you notice any difference in the quality of your tracks at 96k vs 48 or 44.1? Just curious, as I've read some people hear a difference, but some don't. This is especially with the guys who use ampsims, they swear using 'em at 96 sounds better...

Wouldn't that make your tracks' file size larger if you used 96 or 48??
 
minerman said:
I've tried to read up on this, & I know I could just try it here myself, but do you notice any difference in the quality of your tracks at 96k vs 48 or 44.1? Just curious, as I've read some people hear a difference, but some don't. This is especially with the guys who use ampsims, they swear using 'em at 96 sounds better...

Wouldn't that make your tracks' file size larger if you used 96 or 48??
Click to expand...

It was totally arbitrary that I moved to 96 kHz as a default. I wondered if it sounded any different, so I tried it. I just never switched back. I've never done a true A/B comparison between 44.1/48/96/192. But when I switched, I can say with certainty that it didn't make any noticeable difference. I've basically just kept the 96 kHz setting because I can, no better reason than that. And yeah, the files are definitely larger. But I have a ton of spare storage space right now.

Since I've been fiddling with video lately, I might just move down to 48 kHz as a default, since that's the standard for the audio portion of HD video. My HDD will thank me, and I'll be able to dial my buffer settings down even lower.
 
Tadpui said:
It was totally arbitrary that I moved to 96 kHz as a default. I wondered if it sounded any different, so I tried it. I just never switched back. I've never done a true A/B comparison between 44.1/48/96/192. But when I switched, I can say with certainty that it didn't make any noticeable difference. I've basically just kept the 96 kHz setting because I can, no better reason than that. And yeah, the files are definitely larger. But I have a ton of spare storage space right now.

Since I've been fiddling with video lately, I might just move down to 48 kHz as a default, since that's the standard for the audio portion of HD video. My HDD will thank me, and I'll be able to dial my buffer settings down even lower.
Click to expand...

Cool man, I've got quite a bit of space on my audio drive (it's less than half full, & I've had it for 6 years now), but I just always thought 44k would sound as good as 48/88/96...My interface (Native Instruments Komplete Audi 6) only goes to 96, what interface are you using dude???
 
Ok, update on the computer (and I sent DM60 some wrong info, because I was trying to do it form memory). It's a 1T hard drive (914G usable after partition) and I've got 173G of space on it right now. Defrag was not needed last night - I have a regularly scheduled defrag set for it.
At least 368G are filled with photos/videos ('My Pictures' folder). All of these except the last few weeks are backed up X2 on USB drives. I would hate to just delete them and then find the USB drives had all conked out on me over time. Cloud storage is too expensive for that volume (its personal, not business stuff).
Should I just hope that one of the USB drives will stay good for a long time?
You guys have mentioned that SSDs are cheap now, but I don't see that when searching - I see $200 for 500G, $300 and up for 1T and those tend to be internal drives.
 
If I understand everything correctly, my idea would be, move off those files sort term and just have the core data on the main drive for a drive copy. Once the new drive is up and running, reuse the old drive for your data storage and inactive projects. Depending on how your current drive is partitioned one drive, two drive letters (c OS and applications, D data) then you don't have to do anything but copy the c drive. Once everything is up and running, you can re-partition the whole old drive so that you will have two physical HDs. One SSD for OS, applications and active projects (C), the old HD for inactive projects and storage (D). External long term storage should not be needed except for back up which you are already doing.

Not sure that is making sense, but it really depends on how your current HD is configured. Your partitions are important, and how much data is stored on each partition.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top