What is your soundcard latency setting?

[justinf]

For those that are using soundcards with adjustable latency: what is your optimal setting?

Mine has traditionally been 7ms at 44.1, but in scrutinizing mixes this weekend we noticed some tiny latency issues that prompted me to bump to the next setting, 13ms. This is unfortunately a perceptible difference when tracking, so I may find that tracking is best at 7 and mixing at 13.

Just wondering what you guys are working with. Incidentally, my Mini-Me over USB 2 clocks in at a tortoise-like 35ms--pretty damn unacceptable imho. Firewire card is due out be the year end. . .

[cvanwinkle]

Generally I try to go as low without choking as I can while recording. And I go with much higher settings during playback unless it takes too much time to start playback after I press the spacebar (i.e. the buffer is so big that it gets annoying).

IMHO there isn't necessarily an "optimal" setting

However, if you're using ASIO, a lot of ASIO hosts use the same buffer size for your VST plugins as the setting you set for your ASIO card. Which means that your granularity in your effects and the automation of their parameters happens every 512 samples (if your buffer is 512 samples).

So for playback, you need to have a higher buffer setting to hear smooth playback without dropouts but it is at the cost of granularity. If you're doing a non-realtime bounce, you can lower down the setting as far as you can. It'll take longer to bounce, but may come up with better results.

-C

[klangtone]

I run an Apogee Rosetta 800 with the Firewire 400 card and use 7ms of latency at 88.2kHz sampling rate. 651 samples to be exact (so ok... 7.38ms).

Roy

[justinf]

IMHO there isn't necessarily an "optimal" setting

This is what I'm finding too, that it's better to track at a slightly lower latency (for less annoyance) and when listening is critical go a little higher (minimal artifacts). For my system 7ms and 13ms seems to do the trick--a small difference, yet significant.

Interesting that I'm not the only one who has come to this conclusion. thanks-

[percussion boy]

I've been getting down to 4 ms with the Firepod at 24/48.

I guess I'm luckier than I thought.