Windows Driver latency / Audio Quality

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This topic contains 6 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of SteffenR SteffenR 9 years, 2 months ago.

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  • #44280
    Profile photo of WaihekeSoundie
    WaihekeSoundie
    Participant

    Hi all,
    Hoping someone can help.
    What I’m trying to achieve is monitoring whist punch in recording (in reaper) through my QU16. This is a band recording context with several players and several different headphone mixes. I have my QU16 hooked to a laptop running Vista over USB B.

    I wanted an easy way to monitor during recording, playback review and punch in recording and an easy way to create headphone mixes to send to my external headphone amps for the players so I opted to split my console in half: I would record through Ch 1-8 and route back those channels from my software to ch 9-16 over USB B for monitoring. I would mute ch 1-8 in the mixes and listen to the sound coming back from my s/w over ch 9-16.
    I realised that I would have some latency but assumed it would be acceptable (I’ve been using RME gear these last 10 years).

    So I set this up and starting recording and monitoring and discovered I cant get a glitch free sound with less than 14ms latency (Standard “streaming mode?” 512 buffer). I’ve played and played with the streaming mode? / buffer settings and this seems to be as fast as it goes… the “min latency” and “low latency” modes just glitch immediately for me.

    With my RME multiface with a small session in Reaper I can run a buffer setting of 64 and get reported 3-4 ms of latency.

    Does anyone have any light to shed on why my set up is performing so badly?

    Thanks

    #44331
    Profile photo of WaihekeSoundie
    WaihekeSoundie
    Participant

    Perhaps I can ask this another way round– what is the lowest usable latency others are getting out of the windows ASIO driver for QU16? I’m wondering if it is an issue on my windows laptop. 14ms is not really usable for monitoring as you record.

    So far I have ended up reverting to Mac- I can get 6.3ms with a 256 buffer on my macbook and mac mini which is good I’d say.

    Andy

    #44332
    Profile photo of
    Anonymous

    What is your PC . and what are the specs of it?laptop
    I used Reaper andhave used PC
    I found the PC more responsive than the mac book pro.
    Faster to respond.
    I use a Dell i7 8gig ram.
    However I didnt try the punch in out scenario you are talking about as I use A GSR24m in studio.
    so I cannot help you at this moment (away from studio and equipment)
    I assume you have turned off anything unnecesssarily running in the back ground on your PC?
    and are connected to the best USB port hard wired onto your mother board?

    daveNZ

    #44333
    Profile photo of WaihekeSoundie
    WaihekeSoundie
    Participant

    Thanks Dave,
    It is USB2 and on the motherboard but it is a pretty low spec laptop.. so yes, guess it could be a laptop (as opposed to driver) issue. I will give it a go with a faster laptop.

    Andy

    #44334
    Profile photo of SteffenR
    SteffenR
    Participant

    Overthink your setup a little bit…
    You are trying to use a dedicated mixer for monitoring, so it’s more useful to make your monitor mixes in the Qu
    and mix it together with the DAW stereo return or the single channels from DAW.
    Monitoring for the recorded chanels has to be off.

    Your QU is the hardware mixer for monitoring like Totalmix in RME gear.
    The monitoring signal is generated in the hardware befor the PC.
    Latency should be no issue here, the mixer adds about 3ms latency in worst case.
    Your over all latency should not go over 3ms and it does not matter what buffer sice your DAW is working with,
    DAW is only for playback…don’t listen to the recorded signals, it makes no sense in digital domain.

    Direct Monitoring is not available in QU because the mixer applys before the ASIO driver.
    It is like your PC is a tape machine and nothing else.

    To record a signal without compression and EQ set your direct out point before all processing.

    Yor Qu can act as a remote control (MIDI over Ethernet only) to set up your mix in the box.

    #44337
    Profile photo of WaihekeSoundie
    WaihekeSoundie
    Participant

    Hi Steffen,
    I understand what you are saying. And yes, that was why I had set up this way so I could use the QU to make my monitoring headphone mixes. I recognized the advantage of monitoring in the QU h/w pre-daw (low latency, use of reverb etc for the monitors only, and QU does monitor mixes so well). However I had (wrongly) assumed that for the unique case of punch in recording, I would need to monitor what I am recording during the punch in stage through the DAW. But I don’t actually need to. True. In fact it is prob heaps better that I continue to monitor direct off the input pre-DAW. Duh 🙂
    I will try that. Thanks 🙂

    Incidentally for the playback monitoring I think I will use Folders tracks (busses) in my DAW to roll up related tracks into “virtual stems” or groups and return those to the DAW .. so I will roll up all Vox into a return on say Ch 9/10, Guitars on 11/12, Drums 13/14 Bass (15/16) so I can create individual monitor mixes using a relative mix of these groups. That sound sensible? I will give that a go tonight.

    Many thanks
    Andy NZ

    #44338
    Profile photo of SteffenR
    SteffenR
    Participant

    sounds good…

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