Reducing latency with Steinway

[ab53]

Not sure where to post this, so I hope this location is ok.

I get some latency problems with my computer. It is liveable, but I would like to improve it. It is a Pentium D960 CPU and a Raptor 10,000 rpm hard drive with an Asus P5wd2-e premium motherboard and DDR 2 PC6400 memory.

Would getting a quad core processor and DDR3 memory reduce the latency with the Steinway software?

Any advice?

THANKS.

[Haydn]

What is your current latency? Latency can also depend on your soundcard and drivers.

BTW, DDR2 is a better by as DDR3 has minimal gains for the cost difference.

Jim

[ab53]

When I set it to 5.3 ms using 96k sampling rate in Sonar, there is a slight delay from plaing my keyboard controller to hearing the sound.
At 2.6 ms I can get a fairly quick reaction from striking a key and hearing the sound, but I get crackling with it.

I am using a Lynx Aurora soundcard with ASIO drivers.

Any suggestions?

[ab53]

I unclicked "multiprocessor engine" in Sonar, and the latency improved! Go figure!

By the way I have a Yamaha CP300 for sale. I compared it to the Steinway today and it was no comparison. The Steinway killed it.

Great job Gary. NOW please put it in a hardware synth I can take on gigs.

[Haydn]

I consider anything under 10 ms to be quite good looking at other's setups especially at 96K. 5.3 ms shouldn't really have much of a noticable latency. Upgrading to a faster system won't really help if you getting latencies that low. You may pickup a couple ms or it could even get worse!

I would be happy to get under 10 ms on my Core 2 Duo system but I think part of the issue is that the EMU 64 bit drivers aren't the most efficient plus I may be having issues running 32 bit plugs thru Bitbridge.

Jim

[bigears]

I have read on this latency issue in several books and I understand there are three settings that affect latency in Sonar. You should probably write down the settings as you have them set now before doing any of this experimenting. The first is the Buffer Size Slider which you reach by choosing Options>Audio which opens the audio options box. You click on the general tab and the buffer size slider is in the mixing latency section, where you can drag the slider left or right to set the buffer size.

The second setting is accessed in the same area (mixing latency) where you can set the buffers in the playback queue.( Directly above the buffer size slider) You can try changing this setting, experimenting with numbers 2-4 and then next click on the advanced tab, and then experiment with settings in the Playback I/O Buffer Size box. I think the recommended setting is around 128 here.

The last setting that I know about is also in the advanced tab of Options>Audio and here you can enable and disable read and write caching.
The explanation that I have read of this setting is that by default, Sonar has disk caching disabled. But if you have enough memory in your computer, it is possible that disk caching could improve performance. So it is something that you have to experiment with. Once again, you can always return to your previous settings.

I hope this will help you get your latency at it's best possible setting for your set-up. John (bigears)