I am trying to reduce latency as much as possible running Live 9 on a Macbook Pro Retina with 8 GB ram. Will upgrade to 16 GB change much?
Thanks!
Buffer, latency and Mac Ram
Re: Buffer, latency and Mac Ram
Won't matter at all for latency I'm afraid.
tarekith
https://tarekith.com
https://tarekith.com
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fishmonkey
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Re: Buffer, latency and Mac Ram
extra RAM won't reduce your latency, unless you happen to be running with a low amount of free RAM; in this case you would also be getting a lot of beachballs and Live would be unusable. in any case, you cannot upgrade the RAM in a Retina MBP...
if you want really low latency, then you need a low latency audio interface that has a good combination of hardware and drivers.
on top of that, your latency is also affected by your audio buffer size and sample rate. smaller buffer sizes and higher sample rates generally result in lower latency (i say generally as the relationship is not linear). to complicate matters further, smaller buffer sizes and higher sample rates increase CPU usage, as your computer needs to work faster to process the audio samples to fill the buffers that shuffle audio from/to your audio interface. so how heavy your sets are on CPU usage will affect your minimum stable latency as well.
other software running in the background can also impact CPU use. note however that overall CPU use is not a reliable indicator of audio processing performance. people are often surprised when they get audio glitches with low overall CPU use. however, audio glitches can be caused whenever something interrupts audio processing, preventing the audio buffers from being filled and emptied at a fast enough rate. poorly written network drivers are a classic cause of this. i should also point out that Live's 'CPU' meter is not actually a CPU usage meter, it is an audio processing meter that tries to give you an idea of how the buffer handling is going.
another thing to watch out for are plugins that might introduce extra latency into your set. this includes devices set to use lookahead, or that need to do lots of processing (e.g. linear phase EQs, convolution reverbs).
if you want really low latency, then you need a low latency audio interface that has a good combination of hardware and drivers.
on top of that, your latency is also affected by your audio buffer size and sample rate. smaller buffer sizes and higher sample rates generally result in lower latency (i say generally as the relationship is not linear). to complicate matters further, smaller buffer sizes and higher sample rates increase CPU usage, as your computer needs to work faster to process the audio samples to fill the buffers that shuffle audio from/to your audio interface. so how heavy your sets are on CPU usage will affect your minimum stable latency as well.
other software running in the background can also impact CPU use. note however that overall CPU use is not a reliable indicator of audio processing performance. people are often surprised when they get audio glitches with low overall CPU use. however, audio glitches can be caused whenever something interrupts audio processing, preventing the audio buffers from being filled and emptied at a fast enough rate. poorly written network drivers are a classic cause of this. i should also point out that Live's 'CPU' meter is not actually a CPU usage meter, it is an audio processing meter that tries to give you an idea of how the buffer handling is going.
another thing to watch out for are plugins that might introduce extra latency into your set. this includes devices set to use lookahead, or that need to do lots of processing (e.g. linear phase EQs, convolution reverbs).