Latency, Buffer Size, ASIO, Etc.

[whcaudio]

Alright so I don't see a search anywhere on here but I'm more than certain this has been addressed a thousand times so I apologize in advance.
I've been out of the music production game since like 2011. Recently decided to install waveform 12 and right off the bat I'm having latency issues.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz
Interface: Avid Maudio Mbox Mini 3 - only one I have
16gb ram

I can select ASIO as the audio device type, but until I installed ASIO4ALL, the mbox didn't show up in the output selection. I can now select it through A4A. However, my buffer size has to be 1400+ in order to get rid of popping/clipping/cutout/etc. My latency is ridiculous and makes it impossible to record anything.

Is this computer just too crappy to even run this stuff? Am I missing something?

[BertKoor]

Here's the forum search form: search.php
It's easy accessible while viewing a post (hourglass icon) but hard to find in the menus indeed.

Google for dpc latency check or latencymon. These are tools that can tell you what's spoiling it for you.

Also there are plenty web pages with recommendations for low latency performance.

Known culprits from top of my head:
- power plan of windows
- wifi network adapter
- virus scanners

Good luck!

[whcaudio]

Here's the forum search form: search.php
It's easy accessible while viewing a post (hourglass icon) but hard to find in the menus indeed.

Google for dpc latency check or latencymon.

Ah I didn't open any posts, could be why. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll start looking into them, and the programs as well. I guess it's a good sign you didn't mention anything about my CPU? I haven't the slightest clue if it's good enough or not. I know it's outdated but I'm certainly not buying a new computer just to record silly songs.

[Fannon]

Alright so I don't see a search anywhere on here but I'm more than certain this has been addressed a thousand times so I apologize in advance.
I've been out of the music production game since like 2011. Recently decided to install waveform 12 and right off the bat I'm having latency issues.
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz
Interface: Avid Maudio Mbox Mini 3 - only one I have
16gb ram

I can select ASIO as the audio device type, but until I installed ASIO4ALL, the mbox didn't show up in the output selection. I can now select it through A4A. However, my buffer size has to be 1400+ in order to get rid of popping/clipping/cutout/etc. My latency is ridiculous and makes it impossible to record anything.

Is this computer just too crappy to even run this stuff? Am I missing something?

The Machine should be ok with that CPU and memory is you don't use too many CPU intensive plugins and keep to recording with 44.1k. Did you check if you get the issues due to high CPU load or was the CPU still in an OK range? What kind of plugins and how many did you expect to run well?

The most obvious things to me to check / change are:
* If you can afford it, get some modern audio interfaces which comes with own, proper ASIO drivers. Could be something like an used Focusrite Scarlet Solo. Maybe something older and used, as long as it has proper ASIO drivers for Win10 and Win11.
* Fun fact: I still have an old Roland Quad Capture that must be more than a decade old and it still runs fine with official provided and supported Win11 ASIO drivers.
* If you can't or just want to keep trying around, consider trying https://github.com/koord-live/KoordASIO instead of Asio4All. One one Laptop I tried it worked significantly better than Asio4All. On another one it didn't. Worth a try.
* Have you considered trying it with your internal sound card? It's a weird thing to try, but maybe Asio4All or KoordASIO works better with it than your mbox.
* Go through your auto starting applications and services and get rid of everything you don't really need there. That's a sensible thing to do in any case and I would start with that before you look into tools like LatencyMon.
* Try it with Reaper, as it's a very performance efficient DAW and the demo version should be fine for testing out and comparing. But I would not expect a real big difference here.

[whcaudio]

>

Plugins I intend to use, as its all I ever really used before:
EZDrummer 2
Amplitube (got version 5, did not run well in WF. Could hear audio but the GUI hung and had to force close.)
Waves Platinum(?) - used for their compressors, eq, spec lyzer, etc.
I basically only do guitars, bass and midi drum songs that aren't track or plugin heavy.

I'm going to actually be trying Cakewalk today as it looks a little closer to what I'm used to, ProTools. I don't have my old copy or info for PT9, and I'm certainly not buying a new copy of that lol. I don't think the issue is with Waveform or anything, I just want to try some different DAWs like you mentioned. May try Reaper as well.

And as for ASIO drivers in interfaces; it's something I never dealt with as I primarily worked on macs and only ever used the avid stuff. I guess the maudio mbox stuff doesn't use ASIO drivers? No clue. I can't seem to find anything about the two mentioned together so, it looks like a new interface (probably used as I'm a cheapo like that lol) might be on the horizon. I'll report back about KoordASIO as well.

Thanks for the tips!

[jackoo]

Well it looks to me that they advertise the product as having proper ASIO drivers (according to their own website: https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/artic ... l-Overview)

However all their tutorials seem to be geared towards Macs instead of PCs. And if you look strictly at specs they don't say much about the drivers.

It wouldn't hurt to see if your computer has any bottleneck with real-time audio processing.
I highly recommend running LatencyMon and see if there is any driver that is flooding with CPU interrupts.

You did install their managing app "MBOX Control", right? is that working ok?
Are you connecting it directly from a USB port on the back of your PC? Are you using USB hubs?
BTW: is that a laptop or a desktop computer?

[jackoo]

[duplicate sorry ]

[jackoo]

[dup]

[Fannon]

And as for ASIO drivers in interfaces; it's something I never dealt with as I primarily worked on macs and only ever used the avid stuff. I guess the maudio mbox stuff doesn't use ASIO drivers? No clue. I can't seem to find anything about the two mentioned together so, it looks like a new interface (probably used as I'm a cheapo like that lol) might be on the horizon. I'll report back about KoordASIO as well.

Thanks for the tips!

Yeah, I also got almost all of my music instruments and equipment used - some things even free or very cheap because broken (and I repaired it). My philosophy here is: Better buy something good and popular used when you get a good price on it. Then it usually also keeps its price well and in case you don't like or need it anymore you can just sell it again without much loss. Also used good quality stuff usually lasts longer than cheap new things.

Just make sure when you get an audio interface that you check out that it has official and proper supported ASIO Drivers. With Windows, that's unfortunately very important as you cannot really rely in the windows drivers to perform well enough.

Would be interested if KoordASIO makes a difference!

[whcaudio]

You did install their managing app "MBOX Control", right? is that working ok?
Are you connecting it directly from a USB port on the back of your PC? Are you using USB hubs?
BTW: is that a laptop or a desktop computer?

Yeah I did and it worked fine. I guess Avid was at least smart enough to know some people might use protools with an mbox on windows.
It's going into USB 3.0 I believe, no hub. It's a lenovo gaming laptop that I repurposed as an audio workstation (just setting it up, I was all mac back in the day).
I'm not great with windows and troubleshooting, still researching.

[whcaudio]

Just make sure when you get an audio interface that you check out that it has official and proper supported ASIO Drivers. With Windows, that's unfortunately very important as you cannot really rely in the windows drivers to perform well enough.

Would be interested if KoordASIO makes a difference!

So I installed cakewalk and it's default settings seemed to work just fine. I did bump the buffer size up because there was some popping initially but after going up to the high 400s/low500s, it's working fine. Amplitube 5 even worked and it seems that's a high cpu plugin. I was able to jam for a bit with a very low, almost imperceptible latency. Having some trouble getting cakewalk to recognize my waves plugins (the stupid vst waveshell issue, gota remember the fix for it).

Kids are bugging now so I'll have to postpone trying out koordasio. I did try to select ASIO to see if it'd bring up ASIO4ALL, and cakewalk threw me an error saying it doesn't really work well with cakewalk and suggested it's own settings (the default one based off seeing the mbox). Seems to work fine though. We'll see how it holds up when I have a whole set of drums programmed and split to sends.

[whcaudio]

Also I've been looking but I'd like to find a list of interfaces that have native ASIO drivers. I must not know which keywords to search for but I can't find any kind of list like that. I kind of still want to get a different interface.

I looked up used ones on fb market place, found a focusrite 2i2(?) and looked up the reviews. Tons of bad reviews saying it has trouble with windows drivers.

[Fannon]

Ok, sounds like you got it working well enough. With that Laptop you cannot expect wonders, but if its around 512 buffer size, I guess that's playable with Guitar.

Regarding ASIO Drivers, just look at the manufacturers support pages if they offer recent drivers.
Actually I would have thought that a Focusrite2i2 should be fine. I don't have it, but it's a very widespread audio interface.

[whcaudio]

Ok, sounds like you got it working well enough. With that Laptop you cannot expect wonders, but if its around 512 buffer size, I guess that's playable with Guitar.

Regarding ASIO Drivers, just look at the manufacturers support pages if they offer recent drivers.
Actually I would have thought that a Focusrite2i2 should be fine. I don't have it, but it's a very widespread audio interface.

Yeah I'll have to do some research before I pick one. The mbox mini isn't bad or anything, especially if it's going to work for now.
It's incredible how much more difficult (at least if you don't spend a LOT of money) doing this on a windows machine is.