QU-16 DAW control & core audio

[FelyonParticipant]

Hi,
did s.o. manage to use the QU-16 DAW control with Studio One 2 Pro?

And I´m very unsatisfied with the performance of the QU-16 as “soundcard”.
It seems to be impossible to get lower latencies, if you are working mainly with VSTi or AU on a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro.
A buffer size of 512 is the lowest I can use without getting overload spikes and pops.
Another problem is the strict 24bit 48KHz policy, when you want to mix audio files for CD production in 16bit & 44.1 KHz.
I waste quite a lot of cpu power, because of the necessary realtime conversion.

[Anonymous]

And I´m very unsatisfied with the performance of the QU-16 as “soundcard”.

What part of “unsatisfied ” are you… the audio quality or the…. performance… or

buffer size of 512

I think from memory I got down to 128 (for tracking and overdubs) but now I have moved size way up to 1000 as using Melodyne (as Celemony recommend) with Reaper as a plugin which is not supposed to work, however it works perfectly for me.

I use a macbook mid 2012 and use every port. QU GSR and 2 large monitors from USB

Not knowing your exact setup… you might want to try driving you macbook midi controls using the Ethernet from your QU
It reduces CPU busy-ness on your mac “so I have been told” and it seems to work extremely well.
Never ever crashed.

[StixParticipant]

Even if you are intending to output your project for CD (44.1 /16 bit) for best performance and quality you should still mix your project at the recommended setting for the QU (48/24bit) and only down convert the final mix as the last step. It you are doing real time sample rate conversion then perhaps this is the cause of your system needing a high buffer setting?

[FelyonParticipant]

Thank you.

I´m not satisfied with the performance of the USB audio interface, the quality is awesome.
Only when I work on pure MIDI projects with virtual instruments the latency and buffer size can´t be set to settings which I´m used to.
I replaced a Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 with the QU-16.
In Live situations running only acoustic sets, this had been a big improvement.
But in my home studio it is a big step backwards.
Maybe Firewire is still superior in terms of latency and cpu load on Macbooks.
Older projects which I run with 128 samples buffer size with the SL are starting to overload the audio engine now even at 512 samples with the QU-16.

To run my own projects in 24bit/48Khz is no problem.
The problem with the mixing project is that I got the project files to create a mix.
I´m not sure if it would spoil the quality to convert them to 24Bit/48KHz for mixing and re-convert them, when I have finished the job.

Philipp

[FelyonParticipant]

Maybe a special driver from A & H could optimize the performance and lower the latency under OSX.
and maybe allow 16bit 44.1 KHz 😉

It seems it is just running with Core Audio, as there is no special driver for OSX like the ASIO drivers for Windows.
There are some good and fast USB 2.0 audio interfaces out there, but the really good ones use their own optimized drivers for Macs.

But maybe I just have to accept the fact, that the QU-16 is developed first of all as live mixer and not really suitable for DAWs.

[FelyonParticipant]

Unfortunately, there´s no edit mode here for posts.

Maybe the QU-16 suffers from the problems which could occur with some USB 2.0 interfaces connected to the UB 3.0 ports on Macbooks from 2012?

[Author]

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