tkingen
Djembes Rock
I know that buffer adjustment is an important part of a good DAW setup, but what the heck are they and what do they do?
Thanks,
Terry Kingen
Thanks,
Terry Kingen
B
Bulls Hit
Well-known member
Buffers are areas of RAM reserved by your music software to hold the digital data that corresponds to the sounds you're recording or playing back.
When recording. an A/D converter converts the analogue signal into binary 0's & 1's. These are held in the buffers and periodically transferred to your disk drive. The buffers are then flushed to be reused.
Likewise when playing back, the software will 'read ahead' from the disk to keep the buffers filled so the music can be played back smoothly without waiting for data to be read from the disk.
When deciding how many buffers to allocate, and how big they should be, there ara a couple of considerations. Allocating lots of buffers should ensure smooth, noise-free recording and playback, but will increase latency. Latency refers to the time taken for you to hear a change in volume or panning etc. when you adjust a control in the software. Allocating fewer buffers reduces latency, but they need to be flushed and refilled more frequently, and if your hard drive is unable to keep up with the increased activity you will hear this as stuttering or clicks on playback
When recording. an A/D converter converts the analogue signal into binary 0's & 1's. These are held in the buffers and periodically transferred to your disk drive. The buffers are then flushed to be reused.
Likewise when playing back, the software will 'read ahead' from the disk to keep the buffers filled so the music can be played back smoothly without waiting for data to be read from the disk.
When deciding how many buffers to allocate, and how big they should be, there ara a couple of considerations. Allocating lots of buffers should ensure smooth, noise-free recording and playback, but will increase latency. Latency refers to the time taken for you to hear a change in volume or panning etc. when you adjust a control in the software. Allocating fewer buffers reduces latency, but they need to be flushed and refilled more frequently, and if your hard drive is unable to keep up with the increased activity you will hear this as stuttering or clicks on playback
tkingen
Djembes Rock
Bulls Hit,
Thank you for the eloquent explanation. Now it makes perfect sense!
Terry Kingen
Thank you for the eloquent explanation. Now it makes perfect sense!
Terry Kingen
M
mishappen
New member
does the wave profiler set the latency and the buffers? Or are these things that need to be hand tweaked. How do you know when you have it set correctly?
dana
dana
dachay2tnr
One Hit Wonder
Yes, they are set by the wave profiler; however they frequently will require tweaking to work properly for your particular system.
To some degree the profiler is simply making an educated guess at the correct settings. If you encouter problems with the profiler's settings, you will need to adjust them.
However, as Bulls Hit described, there is a trade-off between "glitch-free operation" and latency. Also, the more tracks and plugins you have in a project, the more likely you are to run into problems - since there is more data for the computer to keep up with. Therefore, you may need a higher setting (or a better computer) as your projects get more complex.
To some degree the profiler is simply making an educated guess at the correct settings. If you encouter problems with the profiler's settings, you will need to adjust them.
When your system works trouble-free.
However, as Bulls Hit described, there is a trade-off between "glitch-free operation" and latency. Also, the more tracks and plugins you have in a project, the more likely you are to run into problems - since there is more data for the computer to keep up with. Therefore, you may need a higher setting (or a better computer) as your projects get more complex.