Gutted I am.... Latency. Ready to SMASH my laptop

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:30 am

Just out of curiosity - you mentioned this is a P4 3.2 Ghz, is that laptop or desktop? If laptop what make/model? If desktop what's your motherboard?

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:41 am

rozling wrote:Just out of curiosity - you mentioned this is a P4 3.2 Ghz, is that laptop or desktop? If laptop what make/model? If desktop what's your motherboard?

Laptop
Compaq Presario R3000
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review ... 000-review
I have maxed ram to 2gb
Upgraded HD to 5400rpm 250gb

I have not got into the BIOS and reduced the amount or Ram the graphics use. Its currently using the full 128MB.

Noel · Post by **Noel** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:52 am

One of the best benchmarking tools is Sisoft's Sandra.

You can get it from here -> http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/S ... -5280.html

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:59 pm

HOLY MOLY

I turned off the CD/DVD thingy in the device manager and what do you know.
DPC Latency tool tells me a whole new story. Does not go over 76 us. Green, green, green.

I fired up live and did the test tone test. Now down to 768 samples and 32ms @ %80 CPU load.

Better still. just recorded a guitar track and a bass track at 128 samples 9ms @%3 CPU load. Worked fine.

Had to go to 256 samples for playback after dropping in a Chorus on the guitar track and tweaking during play back.

I think I have got

Next jobs, change video ram quota in BIOS, and see if I can do anything about the IRQ double up.

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:52 pm

Delighted to hear it!

Now go play some plugs in realtime!

Sibanger · Post by **Sibanger** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:08 am

So you're not going all hardware anymore?

Glad that you have got over this hurdle.

Your latency grief was getting me down.

Feeling good for you.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:18 am

welcome to flavor country!

I'll sometimes mix some of the 'zero latency monitor' signal into the mix when the latency is tight. that bit of clean guitar at the attack isn't usually distracting from the tone but it is zero latency.

try some hands free looping.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:29 am

My laptop specs are almost the same as gjms, except I have a 7200 rpm HD and an ATI Radeon 9700 graphic card with it's own 128 MB ram and I can still run this interface at 256 with a small-medium track load and 512 samples with lots of tracks and plugins.

You can always do the guitar using direct monitoring anyway, which is almost latency free but you won't hear any of Live's FX.

Apple - their own inbuilt soundcard is nothing to write home about in the Macbook, MBP and they are getting cheap on their firewire interfaces in the same way as the PC manufacturers. Their past policy of only using rock solid TI chipsets is now long gone, cheap Chinese garbage is what they go for nowadays

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:30 am

Noel · Post by **Noel** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 7:25 am

Excellent news!

As for the double IRQ problem I'll repeat my earlier suggestion.

Get a plug in USB card and disable the on-board USB.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 7:37 pm

Noel wrote:As for the double IRQ problem I'll repeat my earlier suggestion.

Get a plug in USB card and disable the on-board USB.

Ok. I missed this. What piece of kit are you referring to? Where does it plug in to if I disable the usb, and whats the advantage...?

Noel · Post by **Noel** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:00 pm

do you have PCMCIA card slot? if so you can get a USB card for about £10. The advantage is that it would most likely be on a different interrupt to the internal USB controller. But check first. The PCMCIA card slot should show up in the device manager so you can check which interrupt it uses before you take the plunge.

Assuming all is well and the PCMCIA card uses a different interrupte then disabling the onboard USB will mean that your firewire port is not sharing an interrupt.

But like someone else pointed out, interupt sharing is not necessarily such a bad thing.

It's all trial and error I'm afraid, but at least a USB card is reasonably cheap.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 9:20 pm

Noel wrote:do you have PCMCIA card slot?

Yes. Texas Instruments PCI-1620 Cardbus Controller with Ultra Media. There are two listings. One sharing the IRQ 16 of the Firewire and one with IRQ 17 which matches one of the USB IRQ's.

Thanks. I will look into that.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:30 am

Ok. Very Noob. I posted earlier that I had an IRQ conflict, but I am not sure now. Can someone tell from this...

Also, I have managed to sort out how to change the amount of video Ram in the BIOS settings. I have dialed it all the way back from 128mb to 16mb.

Now when I use the DPC Latency checker, just sitting idle, it won't go over 80 micro seconds.

I'm getting there, thanks for your patience and continued help.

Not so DARTH gjm.