Odd latency characteristic with Tascam US-200 USB AI

[RonE]

I purchased the US-200 a few months ago, and I'm generally very pleased with its performance. From an audio standpoint it's much better than what I was using previously.

The symptom I'm asking about is a ~500mS latency that happens after the unit has been connected (and therefore 'on') for a period that varies from a few hours to a few days, and affects any audio from any program or source. In other words, if I reset things (unplug the USB and re-connect), everything is fine. Latency is effectively zero no matter whether the source is audio files on the PC (from any program) or audio from one of my external sources (keyboards, MIDI modules, etc.). Fast forward to a later time, I return to the PC, pop on the headphones, and now there's a half-second (or so) delay between when a waveform (or even a visualization in Media Player) appears and when the sound is heard.

All I have to do to correct it is 'reset' the interface (unplug/reconnect the USB).

For reference, the PC is a dual-core G870 64-bit with 8GB RAM running Win 7 64 bit.

Any thoughts on what could cause this?

 

[DM60]

I am not a TASCAM user, but, for my interface, I usually shut it down after a few hours to clear out data. Now, I know there are leaks in the OS, drivers, etc. that is just the way it is. I would think after a session, or before a new one, I would just reboot to clear all of the data out. Not sure if it is on the TASCAM side or the Windows side, but sound like data is not being purged and causing issues. You could look at driver updates and such, but to be honest, if you get 10 hours per session or more, I would just reboot and keep going.

Try the ASIO driver update to see if that fixes it, but for that amount of session time, I am not sure the chase is worth it. But, it is the principle of the matter

 

[RonE]

Thanks David. That's what I end up doing anyway, so until I get a better solution I'll keep doing it. The US-200 uses Tascam's drivers, and I have the latest version - and I have a support ticket open with them, so we'll see. If I do get a solution, I'll post it here.

 

[DM60]

Thanks David. That's what I end up doing anyway, so until I get a better solution I'll keep doing it. The US-200 uses Tascam's drivers, and I have the latest version - and I have a support ticket open with them, so we'll see. If I do get a solution, I'll post it here.

Hopefully the drivers they are using understands how to close threads and exit correctly. With the new PCs and with the extra power, programmers don't manage resources as well as they use to. So, they don't close and return resources after use. This is just bad coding and many people who program on the PC (Mac or Windows) are many times, just hacks.

Good luck.

 

[RonE]

and that, David, is what this is beginning to 'feel' like. I was using my MIDI programmer/sequencer and created the audio files from the MIDI tracks, then closed that program and opened my multi-track mixer to work with those audio files. The latency/delay was there. I'm going to contact both and see if they can help.