My GS latency issue

[Lance]

Here\'s my setup

GS 160, PIII 800, 288 megs ram, 9 gig, 20 gig, and 40 gig drives, (ultra DMA), 3DFX voodoo video card, Aark 2020+, MIDISPORT 2x2 USB midi interface...

Here\'s my problem. I sequence on a Mac with Digital Performer and I am noticing latency up to 35ms. I must offset my GigaStudio tracks in Performer 25+ ticks (480 ticks per quarter note) ahead of other tracks to maintain musical sync. I have tried everything. Upgraded ram, drives, motherboard, different interfaces, updated drivers... It drives me nuts but I have gotten used to offsetting the attacks. I know this is not normal, at least according to Nemesys. What the heck am I doing wrong? Perhaps I have too much data on my drives?

Also, with this config., it takes GigaStudio about 3 minutes to load up. It seems my friends with similar setups have the slow boot times as well.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[nkf]

Lance wrote:
>>>Here\'s my problem. I sequence on a Mac with Digital Performer and I am noticing latency up to 35ms. I must offset my GigaStudio tracks in Performer 25+ ticks (480 ticks per quarter note) ahead of other tracks to maintain musical sync. I have tried everything.<<<
Have you tried a serial port MIDI interface?
Is your soundcard really accessed via GSIF?
I just can report that I have two GigaStudio 96 machines running beside several hardware samplers and I sequence GS like these with LogicAudio from a MAC and haven\'t noticed any latency problems. At first I was very suspicious about latency problems I may encounter but I just can sequence the GS machines very tight without disturbing latency.
Maybe it is interesting what hardware I use for GS:
machine A: PIII, 384MB RAM, ASUS CU-BX,
RME HammerFall LE, Emagic AMT8 (serial)
machine B: Celeron 500, 256 MB RAM, ASUS P2B-S, Pulsar 1, Emagic AMT8 (serial)

NKF

[Lance]

Thanks. I am convinced now that it is my motherboard running at 33Mhz bus speed. I have run tests on associate\'s machines and found theirs to be very good. So, I have order a new tower, motherboard and some additional drives. It better alleviate my problem!

Lance

[Joe Toto]

I have a similar problem with my Aardvark Direct Pro LX6 with Cakewalk and Gigasampler LE. If I try to play a sequence in Cakewalk that has synth tracks and GS tracks all of the GS tracks are in synch with each other but they lag behind the synth tracks. I did not have this problem at all with my old Echo Darla 20. I\'ve set up Cakewalk as recommended by Aardvark but that does not help. I\'ve also noticed that the LX6 seems to consume a lot of system resources, so I can\'t do anything else on the system when I\'m doing this (I have an 866mHz PIII with 256mb RAM and Ultra DMA hard disk).

[Lance]

I think this is the best reply on the subject. Apparently, my motherboard is defective and may explain some other anomolies I am suffering from. Being a bit of a PC idiot and pro Mac, I will give this info to my PC tech and have him work this out, as I cannot. I really appreciate your input. Surely one of my drives is in Slave mode. My tech also suggested I get the Asus motherboard that allows me two additional IDE busses. Do you know of this? Perhaps then all my Giga drives would be masters on their appropriate busses.

Lance


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by cc:
Hmmn, doubtfull. In many systems, a PCI 1.0 card is plugged in - this will automatically force the PCI bus to run at 33MHz. I have not seen this causing problems. More likely its the USB midi interface. Also a possibility that irq\'s are being shared, or that you are using a plug-in controller to which your gigs harddrive is connected (this can add 20ms latency). In fact, I see that you are using 3 harddrives, which means that *either* you are running at least one of the drives as a slave-drive (which is a big no-no), or you are running a drive via a plug-in controller or on-board promise controller, or something alike, all of which can add latency. If you do this, try and make that drive your program drive.

[This message has been edited by cc (edited 03-19-2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[cc]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lance:
Thanks. I am convinced now that it is my motherboard running at 33Mhz bus speed
Lance<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmmn, doubtfull. In many systems, a PCI 1.0 card is plugged in - this will automatically force the PCI bus to run at 33MHz. I have not seen this causing problems. More likely its the USB midi interface. Also a possibility that irq\'s are being shared, or that you are using a plug-in controller to which your gigs harddrive is connected (this can add 20ms latency). In fact, I see that you are using 3 harddrives, which means that *either* you are running at least one of the drives as a slave-drive (which is a big no-no), or you are running a drive via a plug-in controller or on-board promise controller, or something alike, all of which can add latency. If you do this, try and make that drive your program drive.



[This message has been edited by cc (edited 03-19-2001).]