Help with external audio cards

[richsolo12]

Hi, just got Ableton. Very happy with it. I've also purchased some Native Instruments plug ins to go along with Ableton. Unfortunately, I'm operating off my Macbook Pro (which is getting close to celebrating its 4th birthday) and runs with pretty heavy latency after using 3+ VSTs.

So, I've decided to get an external audio card to solve this problem. I have a few questions.

First, will this actually solve my problems? Second, I have a Serato SL2 box that I use for DJing, can this be used as an audio card to lower my latency? I'm not to familiar with audio card usage. If not, what should I look for in purchasing an audio card?

Thanks!

[richsolo12]

Bump!

[trevox]

An audio card with decent audio drivers could help, but will not resolve your issue completely. I had a 4 year old MBP with a MOTU 896HD and still had latency issues. Just bought a shiny new one and my latency is now negligible. One note on audio cards - when you see "zero latency" written as a feature, this is monitoring latency. Once you process the audio, your machine needs time to analyse the audio and effect it. The more processing power your laptop has, the quicker it can do this. If you are really low on RAM, it is possible that your swap file is being accessed constantly which could affect your CPU bandwidth a bit. If it is, you could try adding more RAM, though this may not even help. If not, you may have to learn to live with longer latency until you get a snappier machine.

[richsolo12]

Thanks for the response. So, ultimately, you recommend getting a new machine (or more ram) and / or an audio card? So the audio card really won't make much of a difference? A computer essentially is out of the picture right now.

[trevox]

Thanks for the response. So, ultimately, you recommend getting a new machine (or more ram) and / or an audio card? So the audio card really won't make much of a difference? A computer essentially is out of the picture right now.

The computer is your main limitation. I don't think a better audio card will make that much difference. As I said, possibly increasing your RAM may help, but not guaranteed. Sorry. One thing though - presumably you have a dual core processor? Is multi-core support turned on? (Preferences-->CPU).

[richsolo12]

Yes, multicore support is on. Changing my buffer size probably won't help much either then, huh. It's currently set to 512 samples.

[trevox]

The lower the buffer size, the lower your latency. Lower that as much as you can (until the audio starts crackling). Sorry, I presumed you had already tried lowering this as much as you could.

[richsolo12]

It's already crackling at the current level.

[trevox]

I think it's a case of learning to live with it then. You should go through the Live manual (I think there is a section on compensating for latency) - while this will not get rid of the latency, at least all of your music will be in sync. I have no other advice to offer apart from that, sorry.

[richsolo12]

Alright well I appreciate your time!

[richsolo12]

Just loaded up Ableton with the same song. Now it's working fine? I went from 100%+ latency to 20%. What is causing this?