KVR Audio

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:30 am

What I wonder about is: Who in the world would use ASIO4All if the sounddevice in question comes with it's own ASIO drivers?

Anyways, I'd really like to hear something about this thing being locked at 48KHz or not. In case it is, I will *never* ever buy it.

Shane Sanders · Post by **Shane Sanders** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:50 am

I like the idea of all these little devices popping up and I'm sure all the kinks will get worked out of them eventually, but I don't trust USB or Firewire at all for a mission-critical audio take at this point. I know I'm being paranoid about it, but I just plug into my Boss GT-8 in bypass mode and go out a 24bit S/PDIF into my lowly Echo soundcard. Works like a charm and doesn't add any extra latency or chance of a stutter.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:30 am

Shane Sanders wrote:I like the idea of all these little devices popping up and I'm sure all the kinks will get worked out of them eventually, but I don't trust USB or Firewire at all for a mission-critical audio take at this point.

Shane, a *lot* of USB and FW devices have gone a long way, really!
For instance, I'm using an M-Audio FW410 on both my PC laptop and Macbook, and it's performance is just excellent. I also use NI's Rig Kontrol 2 (which is USB) on both machines. Slightly higher latency, but rock solid as well.
Even the additional CPU overhead both USB and FW interfaces are wellknown for seems to be minimal these days.
You can still get slightly better figures out of PCI interfaces, both in terms of smallest possible latencies and CPU load - but the differences are getting smaller and smaller.

Having said that, for a desktop machine I'd still go PCI.

Shane Sanders · Post by **Shane Sanders** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:36 am

Sascha Franck wrote:
Shane Sanders wrote:I like the idea of all these little devices popping up and I'm sure all the kinks will get worked out of them eventually, but I don't trust USB or Firewire at all for a mission-critical audio take at this point.
Shane, a *lot* of USB and FW devices have gone a long way, really!
For instance, I'm using an M-Audio FW410 on both my PC laptop and Macbook, and it's performance is just excellent. I also use NI's Rig Kontrol 2 (which is USB) on both machines. Slightly higher latency, but rock solid as well.
Even the additional CPU overhead both USB and FW interfaces are wellknown for seems to be minimal these days.
You can still get slightly better figures out of PCI interfaces, both in terms of smallest possible latencies and CPU load - but the differences are getting smaller and smaller.

Having said that, for a desktop machine I'd still go PCI.

That's good to hear. I try to keep my audio tracking latency to 5ms, though I can stand it at 11ms if I have to. But beyond that things start to seem squishy to me in terms of guitar performance. With a synth, I can put up with a little more latency for some reason, but not much more. I'm constantly frustrated by the desire to orchestrate as I go with synths/FX and the desire to be able to record live instruments near the end of a compositional process. By the time a song starts to make me want to experiment more with live playing, my latency is too high or too flaky to attempt it. I keep eyeing a Receptor, but it's just too much money right now.

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:46 am

I get 2 - 3 ms with a buffer setting of 128 with my Echo Layla3G. I still manage to do quite a lot also before my CPU cacks it.

I was going to buy one of those new M-Audio FW1614's but it was a bit more expensive than my Echo.

The only bad thing about the Echo Layla3G is that it cannot digitally resample - as in, I cannot recording internet streams into Wavelab digitally. I have to use two of my outputs and inputs to do it. Which wouldn't bother me if it were digital.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:47 am

Shane Sanders wrote:With a synth, I can put up with a little more latency for some reason, but not much more.

That's normal as virtual instrument's latency is just half of audio monitoring latency. For the latter, latency comes twice due to in- AND output processing.

I'm constantly frustrated by the desire to orchestrate as I go with synths/FX and the desire to be able to record live instruments near the end of a compositional process. By the time a song starts to make me want to experiment more with live playing, my latency is too high or too flaky to attempt it. I keep eyeing a Receptor, but it's just too much money right now.

You may also consider a host being able to work throughout at the lowest possible latencies. Some are, others aren't, the worst probably being Cubase, which is extremely flaky at truly low latencies.
One of the reasons my main music machine is a Macbook these days. With Logic, I set my buffer sizes once and then forget about it. There's close to no difference between running it at 64 or 512 samples.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:54 am

Amberience wrote:I get 2 - 3 ms with a buffer setting of 128 with my Echo Layla3G.

2-3ms??? That's impossible at 128 samples, using 44.1KHz.
128 samples equal 2.9 ms.
For audio monitoring you need to take this x2.
That's almost 6ms.
Then there's safety buffers. Usually something between 100 and 500 samples. Only a real life "in-to-out" test will show the actual figures. You can use this tool to find out:
http://centrance.com/products/ltu/

Amberience · Post by **Amberience** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:57 am

I was merely referencing what the figure says in Live 6. I know it's never THAT accurate because it doesn't take into account other stuff.

Either way, it's low enough to be real time.

chrisby · Post by **chrisby** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 2:20 am

Sascha Franck wrote:What I wonder about is: Who in the world would use ASIO4All if the sounddevice in question comes with it's own ASIO drivers?

One reason is the ability to use an input from one device and an output from another (for instance stealthplug in and soundcard out). You can do that with the WDM drivers anyway but if you need or prerfer asio only for your host it'll do it. Oddly I've noticed that sometimes using the asio4all wrapper I can get lower latency than using the straight wdm drivers. For the guy that is under the impression that the stealthplug doesn't support 44.1k I think older releases of asio4all were 48k only and even when the dev added 44.1k support you had to do some tweaking to make it show up with some devices. Might not apply here, but just going from memory...

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:34 am

Hm, I would expect more or less horrible syncing and recording offset problems when using ASIO4All for such things, let alone a quite higher CPU load.

stag · Post by **stag** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:55 am

Sascha Franck wrote:What I wonder about is: Who in the world would use ASIO4All if the sounddevice in question comes with it's own ASIO drivers?

Anyways, I'd really like to hear something about this thing being locked at 48KHz or not. In case it is, I will *never* ever buy it.

Well, the idea was to force 44.1K setting.

chrisby · Post by **chrisby** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:40 am

Sascha Franck wrote:Hm, I would expect more or less horrible syncing and recording offset problems when using ASIO4All for such things, let alone a quite higher CPU load.

Well it was a long time ago that I did any a/b testing but I don't remember seeing any significant cpu increase (as I said I seem to recall actually getting lower latency through asio4all). It was a long time ago though and for all I know I could have been hampered by crappy wdm drivers, I really don't remember. As for sync problems, I've never noticed anything (and I do always use it with a few different devices), but I'm squarely in the hobbyist camp so it could be that I'm just missing it....

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:35 pm

I've been using the Stealthplug a bit on the Mac and not only does it not need drivers but it does work at 44.1 no problem. However, since it was brought up I tried to get my Stealth to go 44.1 on the PC and you're right it isn't at the moment. I checked about it and the developers are aware of the issue and an update will be made so that it can also run 44.1 on the PC like it can on the Mac. So no you haven't lost your mind Stag!
A downloadable driver update is needed it sounds like.

I realize that is an inconvenience temporarily on the PC if you want to record 44.1 (although 48K does sound beter). If it is a show stopper for anyone then you could wait until that's been updated. However, it is still a phenominal deal for the whole package as I mentioned anyway... you could even consider the audio cable interface free in terms of the value of just the software.

Oh a few pages back someone compared it to the TonePort. The TonePort doesn't come with instrument and effect plug-ins or 500 megs of loops I don't believe. Still a good value box but just not apples with apples in terms of a comparison.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:53 pm

Definitely not an apples with apples comparison. Two different packages, really. There are still grounds on which it can be compared, though, since both have amp modelling at their core (no pun intended).

stag · Post by **stag** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:12 pm

Squids wrote:I've been using the Stealthplug a bit on the Mac and not only does it not need drivers but it does work at 44.1 no problem. However, since it was brought up I tried to get my Stealth to go 44.1 on the PC and you're right it isn't at the moment. I checked about it and the developers are aware of the issue and an update will be made so that it can also run 44.1 on the PC like it can on the Mac. So no you haven't lost your mind Stag!
A downloadable driver update is needed it sounds like.

I realize that is an inconvenience temporarily on the PC if you want to record 44.1 (although 48K does sound beter). If it is a show stopper for anyone then you could wait until that's been updated. However, it is still a phenominal deal for the whole package as I mentioned anyway... you could even consider the audio cable interface free in terms of the value of just the software.

Oh a few pages back someone compared it to the TonePort. The TonePort doesn't come with instrument and effect plug-ins or 500 megs of loops I don't believe. Still a good value box but just not apples with apples in terms of a comparison.

I was about to trade it for a big bag of things that make me smile

, not anymore.
I'll wait then.

Thank you

Amplitube 2 Jimi Hendrix RELEASED this month!!!