About latency

[nanoset]

Hi,

Im thinking buying Steinberg UR22mkII USB. My main focus is to get low latency to play with USB keyboard (also phantom power for microphone).

My questions are,
Will the latency be better with this one than with basic 20e Sound Blaster Xi-Fi?
Any better cheap options out there that does the job as good as UR22, or even better?
Does good CPU lower the latency aswell?
What kind of latency I would expect in FL Studio with i7-4790K, Steinberg UR22mkII and ASIO?

My main focus is in the latency. If I could save the 130e and get same latency with cheap Sound Blaster it would be good at the moment. I could buy cheaper usb interface later for the phantom power input and use it just for recording

[rod_zero]

The fact is you can set latency, in the DAW audio setting window or in the audio interface control panel (the buffer size determines latency, the lower the better). You could try using the ASIO4all driver with your current Sound Blaster.

Dedicated audio interfaces with their own ASIO drivers normally allow to select lower latency settings (the buffer size). The main problem is if you system will present "pops and cracks" when playing instruments or the proyect you are working on, this depends on the CPU, size of the project (and quality settings, for example 16 bits is less demanding than 24) and the CPU used by the instruments.

The quality of the drivers is also a factor, bad drivers may allow you to set low buffer settings but you will get pops and cracks easily.

You have a good CPU so using the ASIO4all driver will help a little, a dedicated audio interface with its own ASIO drivers should be better.

I have the same CPU as you and I can select (with a modest proyect) a buffer size of 64 samples and even 32 samples with just a single instrument, I use an RME Fireface UC as my audio interface.

[nanoset]

I don't actually own the processor yet, but im going to buy it soon.
I have currently E6200 2,6 core2duo processor and simple Sound Blaster card. I can set low latency settings but get immediately cracking sounds with latency under 10ms. With big projects I have to keep it around 25-30ms.

Can you estimate how much efficient USB Audio Interfaces, such as Steinberg UR22mk are for the latency performance boost compared to basic Sound Blaster card? Is it really worth it with tight budget?

[rod_zero]

Not as far as I know, I would suggest to try your new system with the ASIO4all driver and if it doesnt work for you then get a dedicated audio interface.

[nanoset]

Thanks, that's probably best choice.
My budget is so tight I could save second post delivery costs bundling all together to one packet, so I just wanted to make sure I got everything important there to have good start

[wickfut]

Can you estimate how much efficient USB Audio Interfaces, such as Steinberg UR22mk are for the latency performance boost compared to basic Sound Blaster card? Is it really worth it with tight budget?

Assuming all devices have dedicated ASIO drivers, USB has a higher latency than a PCI/e card. Don't buy USB anything for latency.

For eg. a Mytek 192 DAC running @ 44.1 khz with both Firewire and USB could get 2-3ms on firewire and about 8ms on USB 2.0

My current PCIe card doesn't stress @ 3ms and I could easily take it down to 1ms if I needed to.

My old Steinberg UR12 (came free with Cubase could get about 8-10 ms and get a bit weird with heavy track loads.

[rod_zero]

Can you estimate how much efficient USB Audio Interfaces, such as Steinberg UR22mk are for the latency performance boost compared to basic Sound Blaster card? Is it really worth it with tight budget?

Assuming all devices have dedicated ASIO drivers, USB has a higher latency than a PCI/e card. Don't buy USB anything for latency.

For eg. a Mytek 192 DAC running @ 44.1 khz with both Firewire and USB could get 2-3ms on firewire and about 8ms on USB 2.0

My current PCIe card doesn't stress @ 3ms and I could easily take it down to 1ms if I needed to.

My old Steinberg UR12 (came free with Cubase could get about 8-10 ms and get a bit weird with heavy track loads.

While PCIe does have lower latency some brands achive very low latency with USB, as RME.

[wickfut]

While PCIe does have lower latency some brands achive very low latency with USB, as RME.

I don't doubt they do. My problem lies with someone who has an option to go with PCIe or Firewire but gets advised to go with USB, when USB is basically a finger crossed coin toss that it won't randomly lose sync, suck too much power from the USB buss and affect other connected devices, have increased CPU load , have a higher latency etc.

[planetearth]

I don't actually own the processor yet, but im going to buy it soon.
I have currently E6200 2,6 core2duo processor and simple Sound Blaster card. I can set low latency settings but get immediately cracking sounds with latency under 10ms. With big projects I have to keep it around 25-30ms.

Can you estimate how much efficient USB Audio Interfaces, such as Steinberg UR22mk are for the latency performance boost compared to basic Sound Blaster card? Is it really worth it with tight budget?

There's no easy way to estimate what your latency would be, but SoundBlaster cards simply aren't made for multi-channel audio recording.

A faster processor would definitely help, as would optimizing your system to make sure nothing else is running that you don't absolutely need.

Steinberg will provide you with a true ASIO driver. This will be more efficient than "ASIO4All", which is just a wrapper for Windows' own audio drivers. I've tried both; ASIO is much more efficient.

I don't know what prices you're seeing for the Steinberg audio interface, but have you seen Focusrite's 2i2? As long as you don't need MIDI, you can get this pretty cheap.

I have a PCIe version of E-MU's 0404 interface. It's very solid, and I can get very low latency with it. Of course, the latency values climb as the track count climbs, but I can start a project at 2 milliseconds, and as long as I'm not running Arturia synths (or others that aren't terribly well optimized), I can do a few tracks of MIDI before I have to change my settings. I have a faster processor though, so if you have a budget for that, it's something to consider. (And if you have a desktop computer, you can upgrade your dual-core processor relatively inexpensively.)

Steve

[stratum]

ASIO4all is OK with a single audio interface that can handle both recording and playback. If you use it for combining two different audio interfaces into one (say one for recording and another for playback), clock synchronization can become a problem. i.e like saying both audio interfaces claim to be running at 44100 hz but actually one is 44099.9 while the other is running at 44100.1 hz. Sooner or later that will cause an audible glitch.

[Apratim]

ok
1st scenario )are you into vocal recording or other recording stuff then
1)get a audio interface with good ADC (some even come with direct zero latency feature ) and DAC for playback
2)just keep the buffer size to 64 sample for lowest latency while recording(if you buy an interface without the above feature)

2nd scenario)you are into electronic stuff and vocals are only things you think of buying for 1$
1)get a master and salve pc system for all those multiple instances of serum at 4x oversampling
2)for this kinda stuff latency is not a issue so crank the buffer size to max(2048 samples if i am not wrong is the max for buffer)
3)your sound blaster card might not be enough for good audio playback(unless its a xi-fi titanium series) so get a sound card with good DAC not ADC(RME make awesome cards even still now i use my old RME DSP 965.... at 2048 sample @40ms latency cause you ^)

P.S. for using the master and slave system you need daw that supports workload distribution over different system via Ethernet or other medium and get vsts which are optimized for multiple core

since you are using FL forget the 2nd scenario 1st option and get a cpu with high no. of powerful cores(ryzen 7 1700x would be a good coice)

if you want the above feature and want to spend 2k$ on multiple cpu mother board then please stop there and buy the following
1)2 x good cpu(intel 6700k quad or ryzen r7 1800 octa)
2)2 x MOBO
3)1 x REAPER license
4)1 x good sound blaster card (Audigy was a goo series dont know now)
5)1 x ethernet cable

[Zookes]

Things I know of DAWs from experience:

1- Do not attach so much to USB. The controller cannot ever handle so much! Your soundcard is USB? You are doomed to high latency even having RME drivers. You plug in your MIDI keyboard or drum controller also? You plug in your iLok and eLicenser? All performance is nuked, there is no helping it.

2- Do not purchase most expensive mainboards. Big expensive mainboards have huge feature lists and many tweaky bloated drivers, for gamers and video editors in prosumer market and none of it helps us make music. Search for a reasonable feature set that maybe a programmer and VM users enjoy such as light and linux compatible drivers and tested low dpc latency in full builds. Such things as this attract programmers and mean also very good real-time performance for us.

3- You cannot build powerful and silent. You wish for power? Do not purchase a laptop or "silent" or small size desktop cases. Use large form factors, use air cooling. Purchase long cables and position the computer somewhere in other rooms you will not hear it with also some air flow.

4- You wish to have multiple computers for slaves also and to use huge sample libraries? Do not use cheap consumer network router, the speed rating is a lie, it will overheat with your usage, and you cannot control so much that you will need to such as static IP. To be inexpensive here, use old computers and purchase ethernet expansion card, install on it a linux distro and some networking software like pfsense to have these router features. Keep it also disconnected from the internet.

5- Purchase AMD GPU. Onboard GPU uses CPU and is bad always. nvidia has a bloaty driver, AMD driver has much much lower dpc latency statistically. Tho AMD is underpowered for gaming and offline rendering, you do not purchase the GPU for this! You purchase it for showing you on the display how to interact with your music and for maybe streaming video. You do not need a powerful one for such things, tho one is needed.

[Roman Empire]

Hearing that your budget is tight, I agree that you should see if ASIO4ALL is satisfying for you.
If not, try to find a 2nd hand RME DSP9632 Pcie card. It´s among the best, and it´ll cost you 100-150 EUR.

Best Regards

Roman Empire