latency issues and vst plug-ins

[tman666]

hi all

i'm having particular problems with latency, especially when using vst plug-ins.
any helpful advice?

im assuming there's probably already been a thread on this somewhere, if so just point me in the right direction.

btw im using producer edition version 4

 

[TimOBrien]

Latency is all in your >soundcard drivers< and can be adjusted in the ASIO control panel.

Here's an article for you:

"Living with Latency" from Sound-on-Sound magazine-
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun07/articles/latency_0607.htm

 

[tman666]

cheers that is very helpful

 

[Whale Bone]

Here's an article for you:

"Living with Latency" from Sound-on-Sound magazine-
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun07/articles/latency_0607.htm

Nice article. Thanks for posting.

I never knew this: (from the article)

You can work out how much delay they cause by taking the number of samples, multiplying by two, and dividing by the number of samples per second at the current sample rate. So, for instance, if you're recording at 44.1kHz in a computer system with input and output buffers set to 512 samples, the delay caused by buffering, in seconds, will be 512 x 2 / 44100, or 0.023. Add the delay caused by the converters, and you reach a figure of 25 milliseconds or more.

Though, qualified later by

For example, even though my main music computer is a modern 2GHz Centrino laptop, running the latest version of Windows XP, I've never yet found a Firewire or USB audio interface that will work reliably with it at latencies below 20ms or so. And even if your computer can operate reliably at a 5ms latency, doing so will probably place a much heavier load on the CPU than working with a larger buffer size.

Have people found this 20ms limit to be generally true? At the very least, the formula makes me think I should revisit my buffer setting. I'd set it originally to work with 96KHz (1024 samples), but I've since been recording at 48 or 44.1K, and that would suggest I can halve my sample count with no problem.


samples | sample rate | Samples x 2/Sample Rate *1000 (ms)
512 | 44100 | 23.22
512 | 48000 | 21.33
512 | 88200 | 11.61
512 | 96000 | 10.67
1024 | 44100 | 46.44
1024 | 48000 | 42.67
1024 | 88200 | 23.22
1024 | 96000 | 21.33