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Lowering Latency....Soundcard?

Damani311

Damani311

Sep 30, 2006
552
33
Asheville, North Carolina
#1
Using a cheap MIDI keyboard and presonus audiobox plugged into my PC, and there's a huge delay between the press of a key and the sound.

Only using provided onboard sound capabilties, and thinking of ways to lower latency. Would the best move be buying a nice sound card, or is it more about the CPU (which is a quad core so should be decent at least).

Thanks in advance for responses!
 
#3
You are using the audio box, not on board sound, yes? There will be a setting in the presonus control panel for buffer size (measured in samples). Lower settings mean less latency. Try 128 samples and 44.1k sample rate. Make sure your audio software is configured to use the presonus.
 
#7
What DAW?
Some samplers/synth have standalone versions you can use outside a DAW. Set the Audio to ASIO and midi in directly from your keyboard. If it's OK there, but not in the DAW, then there may be more settings in the DAW to tweak.
DAWs and standalones have LED (simulated) input from midi - see if the midi is getting straight in or if it's delayed itself.
 
#9
Also from the PDF manual:

Your AudioBox USB features a control panel on Windows systems that allows you to adjust the buffer size and sample rate.
ASIO Buffer Size (Windows Only): Changes the Buffer Size.
You can set the buffer size from 32 to 2,048 samples. The buffer size determines the roundtrip time it takes audio data to be converted from analog to digital and back to analog. As a general rule, the higher the buffer size, the better the system performance, but the less playable virtual instruments and the like become. In general, 512 samples (11 to 12
milliseconds) will provide you with a large enough buffer for optimum system performance but small enough to be unobtrusive. You should set your buffer size prior to launching your host application.
 
#10
Do you use the audio-outs of the keyboard or is it "just" a keyboard that triggers sounds from a software-synth?
What kind of problem do you have with latency? If you record audio like your bass, you can always use direct monitoring.
I guess, supposed you're playing a software synth, it has nothing to do with the latency of your soundcard.
 
#11
dxb said:
You can set the buffer size from 32 to 2,048 samples. The buffer size determines the roundtrip time it takes audio data to be converted from analog to digital and back to analog. As a general rule, the higher the buffer size, the better the system performance, but the less playable virtual instruments and the like become.
Click to expand...

Even 2048 samples should still be under 50ms, I think. That's definitely enough to be noticeable, but I don't know if I'd call it a "huge delay". (The OP said "there's a huge delay between the press of a key and the sound".)

Might be useful if the OP could quantify the delay somehow, or make a recording that captures both the output sound and the sound of their finger hitting the key.
 
#12
Anything over 128 (buffer) even with my Thunderbolt audio interface is a big delay to me. I really don't like latency. That's the only reason that I track using headphones (well, that and I am too lazy to calculate the delay to set the nudge value to - accounting for distance from the speaker :D).
 
#13
If you're using the computer headphone or speaker out to monitor or mix, you may want to use the USB audio box monitor out or headphone out to monitor and mix. Also, if you're using windows 7 or 10 and have a lot of different external drives plugged into your USB ports, it will slow down operation. Also, check your MIDI input settings, they sometimes have alternative instrument options that may make a difference.
 

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