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USB Audio Interface and Latency...

ThirstyMonkey

ThirstyMonkey

Jun 27, 2011
252
245
#1
what are your experiences?

My current home set up uses a Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 as both my main mixer and audio interface (running firewire into a 2012 Mac mini). After 12 years my mixer has given up the ghost and lack of support for the legacy mixers on the Presonus side and firewire on newer Macs, tells me it's time to move on.

I'm thinking of getting one of replacing my dead mixer with one of the newer Series III mixers, but they're usb connections and I've read bad things about usb and latency. I know I can monitor directly from the mixer when tracking and avoiding this, but I'm still curious about real world experiences from those if you whop have usb audio interfaces.
 
#2
modern usb interfaces are not that bad compared to firewire (but yeah, there're more performant interfaces like thunderbolt). to complicate this a bit, there exist ridiculously slow interfaces utilizing modern hi-speed interfaces as well. I'd expect the round-trip latency of like 4-8ms on a decent modern usb interface set up right.

how much it will be above the 4ms: 4, 5, 8 or even greater to unusable -- this depends on the exact interface, not on the USB or its' version. so, to sum it up, USB for audio interfaces is okay, there're lots of people who successfully use them. will the Series III mixer run at a decent latency? that's totally unpredictable, ask the owners of this exact mixer about its' speed and stability when connected by USB.
 
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#3
Any protocol (USB-A, USB-C, Thunderbolt, PCIe, ethernet, etc.) can be fine for latency. The real determining factor is how many simultaneous I/O streams you need, and how much DSP you're applying that needs to be monitored. RME manages imperceptible latency over USB-A and has for years. There's no reason it's not possible. Also, keep in mind that latency comes with two common misconceptions:
  1. Zero latency monitoring is actually zero latency. It's not. You can't get around the physics of passing through a set of converters, and without placing an analog mixing solution in front of those converters you cannot avoid latency.
  2. All latency is perceptible. It's not. The human threshold for perceiving two sound sources as distinct tends to be around 8ms in most studies. Most modern audio interfaces have roundtrip latency considerably lower than this, provided you're not applying tons of DSP that needs to be monitored.
 
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#4
While perceived "latency" is often related to the protocols Silky mentions above and AD/DA converter hardware, I think the biggest issue most users with limited budgets ( like everyone, right? ) suffer from is slow CPU, slow and low RAM/memory, and now increasingly, slow and low GPU ( graphics processors ).

New stuff is blazing fast. Old stuff is blazing slow :)

EDIT: I forgot the obvious: NVRAM/M.2 vs. spinning drives. Ungodly differences...
 
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#5
Latency isn't a big issue anymore, and it's usually something else running on a PC. People have been blaming USB for everything, and it turns out USB has been fine for years for 40+ channels of audio. If you can dedicate your PC to Music and not put other crap on it, you'll be better off.

Many "modeling" and IR pedals are used by guitarist and bassist have latency, and a properly configured PC/Interface can beat them on Latency speed even on a 10 year old computer.
 
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#6
When running our series 32r series 3 in interface mode for recording, we've only monitored from the interface. It works great. We're taxing the workstation we're recording on, so we don't use it for monitoring. B
 
#7
ThirstyMonkey said:
what are your experiences?

My current home set up uses a Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 as both my main mixer and audio interface (running firewire into a 2012 Mac mini). After 12 years my mixer has given up the ghost and lack of support for the legacy mixers on the Presonus side and firewire on newer Macs, tells me it's time to move on.

I'm thinking of getting one of replacing my dead mixer with one of the newer Series III mixers, but they're usb connections and I've read bad things about usb and latency. I know I can monitor directly from the mixer when tracking and avoiding this, but I'm still curious about real world experiences from those if you whop have usb audio interfaces.
Click to expand...

If you're specifically concerned about monitoring latency from a USB interface--not monitoring latency from whatever computer--I can say this much, I have zero issues with latency monitoring from my UA Volt 276 interface. That would be the case with any version of UA Volt series interfaces.
 
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#8
I use Focusrite Scarlett, Arturia AudioFuse (just for kbds), and Black Lion Audio Revolution USB interfaces and haven’t experienced any significant latency issues provided the most up to date drivers are loaded and you’ve optimized the settings in your DAW for whatever interface(s) you’re using. If I’m monitoring a track I’m recording I always use the headphone monitor output on the interface. No latency issues there either.

But a lot can depend on what you’re running for a host computer. In my case it’s an AMD Ryzen based MOBO with 32GB RAM, an NVRAM main drive plus an SSD data drive. I also use a pair of external USB drives for long term project storage and backup. All connections are USB 3.0. So far, this machine easily handles anything I throw at it.
 
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#9
I use an RME Fireface (32 in and out0 with USB A output, MOTU ADAT converters, and simultaneously recording 11 channels only had to correct 3ms of latency in the DAW.

How the interface is built seems to have a greater impact on operational latency than the cable used to connect it. RME has been known to hold it's own against the high dollar Apollo units as well. I don't have too much experience with the consumer grade units from FocusRite, PreSonus, similar due to lack of I/O, but I'll bet their modern offerings are pretty low latency,
 
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#11
I've used the 32r series iii with an m2 MacBook and a decent hp lappy for recording. When hitting a lot of channels, we've found using a separate external ssd (we're using a Samsung T7 on a USB 3.2 port) helps.
 
#12
We use presonus hp2 headphone amps and monitor using those for recording. We'll map the scratch tracks from the daw to the "tape in" (channel 37/38 in on the usb feed) and use that.
 
#13
The great thing about USB is that it will likely still work just fine in 20 years from now. Universal Serial Bus afterall. My Focusrite 2i2 2nd gen has a roundtrip latency of 7.8ms with a sample rate of 48000 and a buffer size of 64. That's easily low enough to play through and I don't get any artifacts or anything like that.
USB is great and anybody who says anything bad about USB would rather pay premium on products that go obsolete within 5 years with proprietary standards.
Honestly though, it'll be just fine for 99.9% of all users (even professionals). Firewire goes from 400-3200 Mbit/s, while USB 2.0 does 480. USB 3.0 does 5 Gbit/s, USB 3.1 does 10. Whether you use Intel or AMD, if you have enough USB controllers, your Windows PC can easily handle hundreds of USB devices at the same time with full functionality
There's definitely no problems with the standard itself.
 
#15
I have a Behringer UMC404HD. I can plug my bass in and play along with music from my computer with zero problems, i.e., I cannot detect any latency while playing. However, when panning between the input signal(direct from the bass) and the output signal (from the computer), there's definitely a latency, but it's very short. If I set the knob between the two, it's like a real short echo effect. I should hook it up to my oscilloscope and see if I can measure it.
 
#17
rodak said:
If I set the knob between the two, it's like a real short echo effect. I should hook it up to my oscilloscope and see if I can measure it.
Click to expand...
You can measure it by doing a simple loopback test. Just patch an appropriate output into one of the physical inputs on the interface and send an audio pip/ping that begins at a known sample location, record the resultant chain and then measure the sample offset in your DAW. You can then use the sample rate and number of samples to calculate the number of milliseconds. It's quite simple and will be sample-accurate. Some DAWs, such as Logic, provide a utility that will calculate the offset for you as either number of samples or number of milliseconds.
 
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#18
I use Antelope Audio. They have very low latency even when connected to other interfaces via ADAT protocol and I do not even need a fast machine. 2015 Macbook. Well I have an M2 Mac Mini as well as the last Intel i9 Macbook but I am not using those yet.

I had a session with all the 8 inputs on the Zen Tour being used and connected via ADAT to an Audient Evo 16 and using 7 out of 8 at 48 KHZ 24 bit and the Macbook was doing fine. I monitored out of the Zen Tour which has 4 outs and 2 headphone mixes and the Audient had line outs as well. I was using thunderbolt but it should work with USB 2.0 as well. This is a portable interface and that session was "live" not in a studio per se but just a great big room and musicians played in a circle. It had the expandability for another external interface via ADAT.

It's not surprising since they do make 64 input interfaces and USB C can handle those and can be expanded to 128 using Dante, but the traffic all goes to that one USB cable to a computer.

The new USB 4 supports 40 Gbits/s and the USB 4 v2 is 80 Gbits/s -- but even the old USB 2.0 was pretty capable for audio
 
#19
Julian Krause’s YT channel is an excellent resource for interface tests and reviews.

I’ve been partial to Focusrite’s Scarlett series and I’ve used various models as my goto. They’ve just released their 4th generation models which have even better specs than the already excellent specs they had before.



If you want a refresher on what to think about and look for in an audio interface, check out this video:

 
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