Latency -- I hate PC's

krd

My big question -- though I'm sure this has been answered before, but I'm looking for an answer to stop myself from going in sane.

I'm using an Alesis IO2 crock of **** (expensive for what I paid for it piece of ****)

In any application I try and use it, The lowest latency I can get (it states) before the sound starts distorting madly on my machine, is 4ms.

At the 4ms mark, I still get occasional pops and clicks. and it's distractingly out for me,, it's off, it's unusalbe for recording a comfortable vocal, as it sounds like it's got chorus on it when I here it back. (it has to be greatered then 4ms real latency -- it sounds more in the range of 15 -20 ms)

I'm using windows -- has anyone found a way of closing off all unesscary background processes -- or whatever else it takes to give audio priority so I can reduce the latency.


Before anyone goads me about how I should buy a more powerful PC. I hate PC's, My PC has Gigs of memory, and the processor runs at over a Gig,,,, I have some 10 yearold standalone digital equipment (a hardisk recorder for one) the old equipment has memory chips that are all of 4megs -- and processor speeds below 20meghertz -- making my PC a 1000 times faster. They never ever ever ever have an audible latency for anything -- but they are crap for editing recordings.... If I could visually cut and paste on the digital recorder -- and do multiple takes easier -- I'd never touch a PC.

So before you say I should buy more expensive equipment -- how does something with a thousand times less proccessing power never have any latency?

As far as making music goes PC's are such a pain.

dav nagle

Pro tools and Logic both have low latency mode which is just essential when recording. What are you using to record?

hexagramer

hey krd, heres what you need to do, sell your alesis 'dirt' (i know how you feel about latency n that, its just pure horrible of a feeling) and buy anything from this list:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.protools_compatible

thats a list of everything that maudio do, and once its maudio it means you wont have ANY latency at all. pm me about protools too if u wanna take this road.

or if u want to try and resolve your alesis issue try the following:

getting new drivers for your interface off the aleses websites and reinstalling them,

or try kill any other program running on ur comp by holding down Ctrl+Alt+Del and a popup with all your running programs will appear.

hope this helps

Neurojazz

If the playback sounds like it has chorus on it then there's a problem with the routing of the signals within the DAW, the Alesis may not be at fault.

The reason i say this is that you say it sounds like chorus... i.e. a signal with another on top a few milliseconds out - this sounds like the signal you are recording has another being layered ontop at the moment of recording...

As a stab in the dark, it wounds like some sort of monitor signal (like sound from your speakers) is getting into the mike while recording (or something in your DAW is)

Hope that helps,
Matt.

OOO also, don't force the latency down to 4ms, back off a little to get rid of the pops!!!!!!

anders

Hi,
nothing will give you zero latency (or even near zero latency) monitoring with an USB 1.1 interface going trough your recording software. No mater what computer, software, operating system or what brand of interface (not even M-Audio). The USB 1.1 bus is just too slow.
What you have is a direct hardware monitoring buss, some sort of mix function, called monitor mix on your Alesis. When turned all the way to the left you only hear the incoming signal (mic or instrument), when turned all the way to the right you only hear what's been sent out from your recording software of chose. If you have the monitor mix dial somewhere in between then you hear both and that's where I think you get your chorus effect like Neurojazz said.
To get rid of the chorus just mute the channel you're recording to so that you only hear the direct signal. Should take care of both the latency and the chorus problem.

PaulBrewer

anders wrote: »

Hi,
nothing will give you zero latency (or even near zero latency) monitoring with an USB 1.1 interface going trough your recording software. No mater what computer, software, operating system or what brand of interface (not even M-Audio). The USB 1.1 bus is just too slow.
What you have is a direct hardware monitoring buss, some sort of mix function, called monitor mix on your Alesis. When turned all the way to the left you only hear the incoming signal (mic or instrument), when turned all the way to the right you only hear what's been sent out from your recording software of chose. If you have the monitor mix dial somewhere in between then you hear both and that's where I think you get your chorus effect like Neurojazz said.
To get rid of the chorus just mute the channel you're recording to so that you only hear the direct signal. Should take care of both the latency and the chorus problem.

Good Post!

danjokill

Agree 100% with the boys above. The only way to do it is direct monitoring
It bug's the hell out of me. You can get away with it with certain instruments. This ain't just a PC issue by the way. No PC or Mac will ever be as quick as your brain.

krd

Thanks for the advice

I paid 190 for the Alesis IO2 -- possibly one of the stupidest things I've ever done. The guy in the shop literally laughed in my face when I tried to take it back.

There's not such thing as zero latency. It's noticable latency is the problem. I'm sure my machine is telling me lies when it say 4ms latency,,, based on some rough calculations 4 ms would be difficult for me to notice. I think when it's saying 4, I'm here 20 ms.

The real problem is windows not being a Real Time operating system. It was never intended to be. In general hardware electronic music equipment uses very little memory, and not very powerful processors -- but they generally use RealTime OS, which make them perfect for making music. Hardware manufactures like Roland have done incredible things with very little memory or processing power.

I've been thinking,,, and I hate thinking,,,especially about PC's,,,,I'm thinking of experimenting with a dual boot,,, with one OS stripped down to nearly nothing.

And beware Numark bought Alesis and our now shipping some of their crap under the Alesis label.

Thanks again

120_Minutes

have you tried asio4all? its a little feeware program that lets you adjust your buffers via sliders. i use it with a pod xt via usb. it allows me to use the pod as my input, and the soundcard as my output. although i have no latency, i do get clicks and pops which i'm still trying to get rid of.

Anima

The real problem is windows not being a Real Time operating system. It was never intended to be. In general hardware electronic music equipment uses very little memory, and not very powerful processors -- but they generally use RealTime OS, which make them perfect for making music. Hardware manufactures like Roland have done incredible things with very little memory or processing power.

Theres lots of half true and just wrong information there.

PaulBrewer

Anima wrote: »

Theres lots of half true and just wrong information there.

Care to explain Anima?

Anima

The reason OS's exist is because a CPU can only run one program at a time. It needs an OS to switch between each program very fast to give the illusion of everything running at the same time. You may think everything on your desktop is running all at once but really each bit is running for a fraction of a second over and over. CPUs are that fast. So saying Windows isn't an OS is just plain wrong.

Neurojazz

I've found vocals/guitars problematic for sometime until i started realising i had to start direct monitoring... once you get used to that and shifting the performance around after if it a few ms out then it's not too much bother.

I tend to run my system with lots of latency so that i never get the pops etc.... - i tried to keep it below 40ms for ages and now don't bother.

I'm sure if i recorded live instruments all the time i'd know a hell of lot more about these issues

I don't know if you guys know about the hammerfall stuff - isn't that very, very fast for recording real instruments?

anders

Anima wrote: »

So saying Windows isn't an OS is just plain wrong.

krd didn't say Windows wasn't an OS just that it's not a Real Time OS.

Anima

Ugh sorry yeah read it wrong, my bad. It was late! :pac:

c-note

i starteed to record on windows 98 400mhz machine with bog standard soundcard (probably £9.99 worth back in the day)
the best latency i could achieve with tweaking the buffers was about 50ms.
but that was fine, because i used direct monitoring, so once i played in time with what i was hearing, the prog would compensate for the latency so that in playback it was all still in time.
one thing i couldnt do is record midi tracts with software synt, as there is no way to direct monitor them, (unless your keyboard has a built in synth).

later i started using an edirol ua-20 (usb) on a good xp machine (2002)
best latency i could achive was about 10ms, which was fine for me. midi instruments were a bit off but playable,

if your getting pops and clicks your buffers are prob tooo small and need to be increased, this will increase latency but thats the price you pay for a clean recording.

as far as ending backround processes, there used to be a prog called "end it all" where you can configure it to keep alive only nesscessary processes when you run it. i dont know how much it'll help, anti-virus seems to be one of the main culprits.

as far as low processor powered devices having near zero latency, i also found this quite amazing at first, on a digial effects board, to have no noticable latency. but then i cant play games, mp3's, surf the net, write progs etc etc on the effects board.

i know you dont want to hear the "buy better gear" line... but...
theres only so much you can squeeze out of what you've got.
whatever you buy it'll never be perfect, but its always nice to have new stuff.:D

PaulBrewer

c-note wrote: »

i know you dont want to hear the "buy better gear" line... but...

Cough ...

There's a prog called DPC latency checker, handy for when you want to tweak your system, and to generally find what is causing spikes, latency, etc.

It might be helpful!

krd

Ok,,, To make a point. I have a Roland SP 808 -- a strange and unusal beast, that roland are even too embarassed to admit they ever created.

It uses Zip disks as it's harddrive. the memory chips it uses are all of 4mb. Real time digital effects. Absolutely zero noticeable latency on recording.

Before you run out and buy an second hand SP 808 ,, it has some draw backs and quirks. I still love it, but it's a ****er to use -- it's got some glitches that make it nearly unusable.

And if you see one selling on Buy and sell, the reason they're there is because Musicmaker got a job lot of them a few years back (they were dumped on the Irish market)

I'm going to do some experimentation with a linux RTOS -- See how it goes.

PC's with clocks running in the gigahertz range and throughputs in the range of 100's of Mb -- they're shouldn't be any noticeable latentcies.

120_Minutes

krd wrote: »

I have a Roland SP 808

I have one too, i got custody of it after a band break up, it was like the child nobody wanted. i have never used it and its in perfect nick. wanna buy it?

krd

The last pc thing I seriously used, was a creative Audigy on a machine that I'm surish, the processor was around 500mhz or less. The was zero noticeable latency on the recording,,,,, But

BUT

There was a huge amount of noise picked up,,, the worst piece of the noise, being digital switching noise from the motherboard.

I'm about to start an experiment with linux (musix live ) -- I believe I can get my latencies down to next to nothing.

---

And the sp 808 -- is an absolute horrible piece of equipment. It's difficult to use and full of terrible bugs there's no fix for.

But saying that -- if you have one and you would like to get rid of it for christmass money or whatever,,, I wouldn't mind having a second one.

So if your SP 808 has developed the fatal "disk busy" bug which is incurable --50 euros would be more the generous.

Saying that,,,,,,,,,you wouldn't know anyone who's got an MC-09 ,, That machine is a unicorn,, if maybe the last unicorn

Soundman

Roland MC-09

krd

Soundman wrote: »

Roland MC-09

Yes ,,, the roland MC-09 -- A Device that the roland corporation like to deny the existence of.

And if you asked the about it they say "Sir,, please do not call this number again,, and if you do call,,we will call the police"


It's very tempting,,,, don't know if my credit card company have cut my card yet. -- but don't know if I have a choice -- I think these things find their way to you,, that the instruments own you,, not the other way round.