Latency with rewire

[Sweetnighter]

I'm using Garageband 2 and Reason 3.0.3 on my iMac G5 (2Ghz processor, 512MB RAM). When I use Reason alone, there's no latency. When I use Garageband alone, there's no latency. When I use them together with rewire, I get a little latency on the MIDI signal going from my keyboard to Reason. In Garageband, when I use the advanced tuner or timing settings on incoming audio, I get a little latency there as well. I'm planning on moving up to Logic Express, so I'm afraid I'll get even more latency with a larger program. Why am I experiencing this problem? My suspicion is a lack of memory, since my processor should be fast enough, but I'm not sure, so I'm asking. Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[ssscientist]

Neither Garageband 2 nor Reason 3 are known memory hogs - 512k sould be MORE than enough to run them. You should have no such problem once you upgrade to Logic Express - I've used that combination on a project and had no latency problems at all.

I can't tell what's giving you latency problems unless you're running a seriously inferior interface...

 

[dwillis45]

Straight from the bowels of the Garageband Help menu:

Depending on the computer and audio hardware you are using, you may hear a slight delay when playing and recording Real Instruments. This delay, called "latency," happens because it takes a short amount of time for the input of your Real Instrument to reach the computer's input port and be processed. You can reduce the amount of latency by selecting an option in GarageBand Preferences.
1 Choose GarageBand > Preferences, then click the Audio/MIDI tab.
2 In the Audio/MIDI pane, click the "Minimum delay when playing instruments live" button in the "Optimize for" section.

Reducing latency by selecting "Minimum delay when playing instruments live" uses more of the computer's processing power. This can affect perfomance, especially on slower computers.

Logic will probably give you the option of setting specific buffer sizes and that should give you sufficient control over the latency beast.

 

[Sweetnighter]

Recently upgraded to Logic, no longer have problems. Thanks for the help... still odd that Garageband had so much latency.