Advice about buffers and latency settings?

[Jake Johnson]

Can someone please explain to me the relation between all the buffer and latency settings in Giga and a sound card?

In combination, my sound card (a Terratec EWS 88D) and Giga have so many possible configurations that I am spending hours trying to find the right one (after once having gotten everything right, but then trying to experiment with other settings and messing it all up...)

On the sound card Control Panel there are the following options:

1. DMA Buffer Transfer Latency
2. GS\\ASIO Buffer Size when in Mulitclient Mode

In Giga, there are the following options:
1. Master Attentuation settings from 0 to -15 dB
2. Dither type
3. Buffers from .5 Mbytes to 4 Mbytes

And it seems to take a while, at times, for some of these settings to kick in, so working by trial and error takes forever, and is not working.

Any general principles to go by? I\'m able to get a single good piano note sample (B6) but the notes around it are distorted, and three whole steps below I get unmusical thumps and detuned notes.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[killerbobjr]

1. DMA Buffer Transfer Latency<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">The main buffer that all the WAV streams get mixed to before sending out to the hardware.

2. GS\\ASIO Buffer Size when in Mulitclient Mode<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">If you have several apps opening up the same port for sound output, each app gets its own buffer before mixing to the main buffer above.

1. Master Attentuation settings from 0 to -15 dB<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">This is how much the amplitude of the waveform is reduced before sending it to the sound card. Several individual channels mixed together at peak volumes can overload the output. I usually set mine to -6dB.

2. Dither type<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Only necessary for 16 bit output. Turn it off if your card supports 24 or 32 bits output.

3. Buffers from .5 Mbytes to 4 Mbytes<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Used when recording GS output to disk. I use 1MB which seems to work well. Slower machines may need higher values to prevent pops and clicks when record-to-disk is used.