Win10 and latency ?

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
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Dear friends,
as some of you know, I've been assembling a PC for my musician son with very little knowledge of music and of musical hw/sw.

With help from some of you I have assembled a PC with Win10 Pro 64bit, an RME Babyface interface and a Roland PCR800 midi keyboard (to get that working was tricky) and for now Presonus Studio One 3 trial and a few VSTs and virtual instruments and effects (Guitar Rig).

When I play on the keyboard I feel there's a slight delay and also some rare instruments/effects seem to introduce some slight "popping/crackling".

Could this be due to device drivers or other settings I should tweak/fix ?

Thank you for any help.

PS Not sure this is relevant: the PC is built on an Asus Z170 deluxe mobo with an i5-6600k CPU, 16 GB RAM, Samsung 850Pro as system's SSD and a 3TB HDD for libraries and crap.

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Make sure you choose RME Babyface as the audio device. You can do it on the startup page, or under Studio One > Options > Audio Setup.

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хвала Branis :-) So the latency will be different between Babyface and the native soundcard right ? Is there anything else I should check (drivers, parameters etc.) ?

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You're welcome :)

The latency will be much lower with ASIO drivers selected and when you select Babyface as your audio device you'll select RME's ASIO driver (I suppose you installed those).

If you still feel latency after that, click the advanced button under Studio One > Options > Audio Setup and choose a lower buffer setting. A lower buffer gives you less latency but it's heavier on the CPU. 256 samples usually works fine with modern computers.

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Branis wrote:[snip]...
If you still feel latency after that, click the advanced button under Studio One > Options > Audio Setup and choose a lower buffer setting. A lower buffer gives you less latency but it's heavier on the CPU. 256 samples usually works fine with modern computers.
Which in turn may cause more crackles/pops.

So, you will need to find a happy medium between higher buffer (more latency)/lower buffer (more pops/crackles).

256 is typically a good medium but you may have to bump it to 512 or more. If you do re-set buffer size it is best to do so at 128 intervals, depending sound module. I'm not sure about the RME Babyface. Check your documentation for recommendations. Some require doubling the previous setting.

Another tip when setting buffer size - it is thought that both the sound module and the DAW settings should be the same. Sometimes people will set the DAW at 256 samples while the sound module has been set at 512, for examples. It is best to insure they are identical in the DAW and the sound module in effort to avoid conflicts in the software and ultimate playback abilities. This may be the reason you experience pops/crackles presently.

Cheers!
dsan
My DAW System:
W7, i5, x64, 8Gb Ram, Edirol FA-101

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Hi there everyone,
after a lot of playing I've reached the following conclusion.

First and foremost I should clarify that generally speaking I was NOT affected by crackles/pop/gaps.

With Studio 1 ver 3 you setup the audio interface from the first main screen.

There you will prominently see the buffer size and expected latency.

When you change those values for the RME Babyface (Fireface interface) the ASIO driver window will open and you change the values.

With my platform, loading sample songs and playing them back while at the same time adding a new track which I played with my PCR-800 keyboard I have reached buffer values as low as 64 bit (around 2 milliseconds latency) without any artifacts.

At the same time on one of those sample songs there's one track which consistently yields a crackle every time its sound is played, this being true at whatever buffer size I tried (up to 1024). Not sure why this is happening.

By playing with http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon I have understood the very obvious: as the PC is installed/configured for general usage there's a lot of programs (such as the Antivirus) and drivers (such as Bluetooth) which could potentially interrupt the CPU causing problems.

I now have to understand if there's an easy way of switching between a "general purpose" and a "music production" setup with Win10 (including BIOS settings when necessary) as I do not have enough resources (money and living space) to have a dedicated rig :-)

Thank you everyone.

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If there's only one track that is crackling the problem most probably lies elsewhere.

Is it an audio or VST track? Is this one crackle or is it crackling throughout the song progress? Is it still crackling when you mute that one track?
If it's an audio track it could be a bad sample. Also, check if the song distorts the main output in Studio 1's mixer.

There's a CPU and Disc meter on the bottom left part of the GUI labeled "Performance". If you click it a new window with more details will pop up. What's your CPU consumption when playing that song while it crackles?

The simplest thing you can do to improve (or rather stabilize) your PC's performance is to turn off bluetooth and wifi while you're making music and turn it back on when needed.

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https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... rocessing/

Try section 4.5.1 & 4.5.2 from this guide.
If that doesn't help proceed to section 3.2.1. & 3.2.2 and keep updating/disabling drivers until it chooses to behave.

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rjalex wrote:Hi there everyone,
after a lot of playing I've reached the following conclusion.

First and foremost I should clarify that generally speaking I was NOT affected by crackles/pop/gaps.

With Studio 1 ver 3 you setup the audio interface from the first main screen.

There you will prominently see the buffer size and expected latency.

When you change those values for the RME Babyface (Fireface interface) the ASIO driver window will open and you change the values.

With my platform, loading sample songs and playing them back while at the same time adding a new track which I played with my PCR-800 keyboard I have reached buffer values as low as 64 bit (around 2 milliseconds latency) without any artifacts.

At the same time on one of those sample songs there's one track which consistently yields a crackle every time its sound is played, this being true at whatever buffer size I tried (up to 1024). Not sure why this is happening.

By playing with http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon I have understood the very obvious: as the PC is installed/configured for general usage there's a lot of programs (such as the Antivirus) and drivers (such as Bluetooth) which could potentially interrupt the CPU causing problems.

I now have to understand if there's an easy way of switching between a "general purpose" and a "music production" setup with Win10 (including BIOS settings when necessary) as I do not have enough resources (money and living space) to have a dedicated rig :-)

Thank you everyone.
You shouldn't have to.

Wifi cards are hit miss with drivers. I've got an ASUS (no longer made) that works and a linksys (also no longer made) which both work great and don't cause artifacts. I also have two or 3 (names I don't remember) that DO NOT WORK. Ask that dude on here who makes PC's (ADK or something like that) and he'll know. Try to get from a place with a return policy because drivers on doze are not 100%. It's not "doze" on it's own, my win10 rig works fine with internet/etc.

Also, the number one culprit for poor performance on PC's is not having the power options set to "high performance" which you may have already done.

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Branis wrote:
The simplest thing you can do to improve (or rather stabilize) your PC's performance is to turn off bluetooth and wifi while you're making music and turn it back on when needed.
That's true but it's not realistic. I use Reason. W/o a net connection, I'd be limited to two options: Get a codemeter dongle (which don't always work from what I understand) or be stuck to one computer (which I have 3 that I use it on)

Good in theory, but many things like/require net connection. As I said in my other post, you should be able to do both. I do :) Have for years.

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Agreed.

My rig has both Wifi, Bluetooth on and working and so far never exhibited a glitch (Asus Z190 Deluxe motherboard and its drivers for those).

Thanks

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5 things:
1. My main guide below. Read it, understand it and do it.
2. Disable EIST, SPEEDSTEP, Cool & Quiet, etc in bios.
3. High performance mode as noted.
4. What is your graphics card? Some cards benefit from older drivers or a certain set of drivers, in terms of latency - nvidia cards are horrible in this regard.
5. In the 'tips for daws' guide there is a note about a tool called wlan optimiser which can destroy latency problems with wifi under win7 - it may work under win10 as well (untested).

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Thanks a lot.
System is pretty ok as it is but I'll go through your advice to learn more !

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