Soundcard questions...

  • Thread starter Thread starter manontheside
  • Start date Start date
M

manontheside

New member
I recently returned my m-audio firewire 410 because of configuration problems. But now I want a new soundcard with little to NO latency. Is this possible? What are PCI based soundcards? Are those faster than firewire? If so, can you guys give me some good ones to check out. thanks guys!
 
manontheside said:
I recently returned my m-audio firewire 410 because of configuration problems. But now I want a new soundcard with little to NO latency. Is this possible? What are PCI based soundcards? Are those faster than firewire? If so, can you guys give me some good ones to check out. thanks guys!
Click to expand...

In order:

1. Not really. You can, however, reduce it to the point that it isn't noticeable. With my M-Audio FireWire hardware, I'm able to do buffer sizes of... was it 128 or 64 bytes? I forget.... :D

2. You don't want one. PCI is a legacy slot architecture. It is gradually being replaced with PCI Express, which isn't compatible with existing PCI cards.

3. PCI provides no real latency advantages over FireWire. The latency difference is (at most) measured in microseconds. If you were having latency problems that you couldn't solve with FireWire, either your machine is too slow to do low latency audio (unlikely) or your FireWire card/chipset is buggy (likely).
 
you hit the nail right on the head on that one. thanks dgatwood. to sum it up in a nutshell, my best option is to just stick with firewire then huh?
 
i think my problem is that i havent figured out how to adjust latency yet. i know there are all these little tricks on cubase i'll get to find out
 
manontheside said:
i think my problem is that i havent figured out how to adjust latency yet. i know there are all these little tricks on cubase i'll get to find out
Click to expand...

You adjust latency by doing two things:

1. Decreasing the buffer size in your recording software.
2. Using a faster CPU that can move the bits around faster.

And of course, you can always get essentially zero latency by using an external mixer or an audio interface that contains a hardware mixer (direct hardware monitoring), though that's slightly dodging the issue. :D
 
dgatwood said:
In order:
2. You don't want one. PCI is a legacy slot architecture. It is gradually being replaced with PCI Express, which isn't compatible with existing PCI cards.
/QUOTE]
PCI express is backwards compatible with PCI. As of now PCI-e is replacing AGP not PCI. PCI will be around for a while. Kind of like the floppy drive. It just will not go away.

Now what do you mean by problems. Like you couldnt figure it out or it just didnt work on your system. If it was that you couldnt figure it out most likely you will have the same problem with any other card. but still with firewire and USB 2 audio interfaces you have more to choose from. theres not as many PCI cards as there are Firewire and usb. and you can also hook it up to a laptop if it has firewire.
Click to expand...
 
Altris is wise, heed his advice :)

latency is mostly related to your processer, not audio card. The buffer settings will allow to tweak that to acceptable levels. (too little and your will get pops and clicks, too much and it will take too long for the audio path to get back to you). The best soundcard in the world will give you latency problems with a 1 gig Celeron

Now make sure you understand what latency is: It is the delay you get when using live inputs into your computer and get modified sound out (like using it as an effect) it can apply to midi inputs (how responsive your virtual instruments are) and live audio inputs. It should never affect playback

And PCI audio will be around for a while (unless protools vanishes, the whole HD line is PCI)
 
Last edited:
ohhhhhhhhhh...

altiris said:
Now what do you mean by problems. Like you couldnt figure it out or it just didnt work on your system. If it was that you couldnt figure it out most likely you will have the same problem with any other card. but still with firewire and USB 2 audio interfaces you have more to choose from. theres not as many PCI cards as there are Firewire and usb. and you can also hook it up to a laptop if it has firewire.
Click to expand...

OK I thought latency had everything to do with the speed of the soundcard, not the pc itself. and yes i havent figured out how to monitor latency yet. cubase is a whole new language for me. thanks for clearing that up
 
yes i havent figured out how to monitor latency yet
Click to expand...

The easy way to check it is to take a guitar (or some other instrument, but a guitar works well) and run it direct in to your software, throw on some serious reverb and see how much time it takes between playing and hearing
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top