Sonar Audio->Options->latency, typical settings?

[ryan_temp]

I was running into that problem where my audio tracks were starting to get out of sync about 50 measures into my song. At that point my latency was set to 10ms. I increased it to about 60ms and it looks like it has remedied it. I was just wondering if that seems like a typical latency setting for my machine (Athlon 1.4, 512 Mb DDR, 7200 rpm 60Gb drive, Audiophile 2496, Win 2000). I realize everyone's got different machines, but I'm just wondering if my latency settings are about the average, or if the performance of my machine is sub-par, or above-par, or whatever... It should all be WDM drivers. Not using any softsynths at this time. Also, is the latency something you should set and not have to adjust, or is it something you change depending on how many tracks you have, effects, softsynts, and activity all around. Just trying to get an idea.
Appreciate any insight, thanks.
Ryan

 

[dachay2tnr]

You are right - there is no typical latency.

Latency, I believe, is entirely a function of your sound card and their drivers (with wdm drivers being the best for achieving low latencies). It has nothing to do with your machine, except that your latency setting will effect your playback capability. If you run with very low latency settings, you will have likely have trouble with playback (depending on track count. etc.). The better the machine, the higher the track count you can get before problems.

Personally I run with relatively high latency settings. This is because I like to "set it and forget it", and also because I have no real need for extremely low latency (i.e., no input monitoring or realtime midi recoding).

Other people who are using tools like Revalver and want to use input monitoring tend to lower their latencies (and also sometimes reduce track count by archiving tracks) when recording, and then increase the settings when just mixing or playing back.

As they say, YMMV.