Ableton Forum

if you want to cut down on latency, definitely dont go down the usb route..usb needs to go through another 'buffer' that has nothing to do with audio and adds a further 5ms to your latency...
in addition midi through usb is notorious for latency (yes there is midi latency also) which can add up to a further 10ms....I might add that the motu usb midi interfaces are some of the worst when it comes to midi latency...

As a general rule, firewire is way less latency prone than usb

And as someone rightly mentioned here, a pcmcia solution would probably out-perform firewire....RME springs to mind here..they have excellent "inherent" and midi latencies..and driver performance is universally accepted as being rock-solid....

I have the tc SK48 running at 32 samples so that could be an option also

Unfortunately, Express card 3/4 solutions have been rare and expensive...

If you want an affordable solution, only need 2/2 and don't mind using external preamps, you might want to keep an eye out for when the new Echo IO X gets Mac drivers...

alltomorrowsparties wrote:if you want to cut down on latency, definitely dont go down the usb route..usb needs to go through another 'buffer' that has nothing to do with audio and adds a further 5ms to your latency...

USB 1.1 surely sucks but I've read in several places that when it comes to audio interfaces (not hard disks!) USB 2.0 can perform on a par with FW400.

in addition midi through usb is notorious for latency

Is it really? With audio, OK, but the vast majority of standalone MIDI interfaces these days are USB. I have several (don't ask!) and they're all pretty much OK. One is really good actually and it's a no-name "MIDI interface cable" for like €10.

According to Sound on Sound, the Emu 0404 USB 2.0 audio interface has a MIDI latency of 1.7 ms when measured with MidiTest and that's very good. SoS also claim that most FW cards perform worse when it comes to MIDI latency.

http://www.emu.com/news/reviews/files/0 ... an2007.pdf

alltomorrowsparties wrote: And as someone rightly mentioned here, a pcmcia solution would probably out-perform firewire.

I do currently use a PCMCIA card and though it doesn't perform bad, it doesn't perform particularly good either. Anyway, as I said, I'm getting an MBP. They don't have PCMCIA slots, only Express card. I've seen cliams that Express cards would perform worse than PCMCIA, but I'd like to have that confirmed (or better - denied!)

Just because one usb interface performs well, it does not mean that they all perform well....Concerning midi latency, i would suspect that that test applied to average midi latency.....I have a motu midi interface with a stated latency of around 2ms but this can peak to around 8ms....and its random! Midi over firewire has been more stable for me in the past
You are definitely taking the right steps in getting a MBP......as I say, I'm getting a really nice 32 samples plus a few....giving a total round trip of slightly above 64 samples at 44.1

The most important factor for you now is whats going to be solid and, by most accounts, you cannot go wrong with RME

Kodama wrote:Unfortunately, Express card 3/4 solutions have been rare and expensive...

If you want an affordable solution, only need 2/2 and don't mind using external preamps, you might want to keep an eye out for when the new Echo IO X gets Mac drivers...

My ideal card would have at least one phantom powered nice sounding mic pre, one high impedance instrument input and a pair of line inputs.

Also, I wasn't too impressed with the original cardbus Indigo, neither with its sound quality, nor with its latency. (I had the opportunity to test an Indigo card with my own system and compare it to two other cards.)

I'll still look in to it, thanks.

dru wrote:I run my Firebox at 128 samples, works fine.

me too, and also a scratchamp2 i use for the road... both flawless.

SubFunk wrote:

dru wrote:I run my Firebox at 128 samples, works fine.

me too, and also a scratchamp2 i use for the road... both flawless.

What's a "scratchamp2"?

serato scratch

timothyallan wrote:serato scratch

Ahh! - well, I'm not a DJ guy at all, I'm one of those kinda rock guys that fell for Live's jammin' abilities.
Well, also, I'm a long time electronica fan and also into a lot of avantgarde stuff. Nevertheless, I'm an instrumentalist rather than a turntableist (now how do you spell that???)

Awright, so a brand new MBP 2.4GHz brick is sitting in my lap - now this is one nice puppy!

I'll bring it to a music store tomorrow and see if I can get to actually try some audio interfaces.

Now the RME stuff looks great but is outside my budget. But what about the Apogee Duet? According to Apogee it will perform just fine with MBP bricks. Anyone using it with an MBP? What kind of total latency are you looking at?

Duet is just a 2x2 with an annoying break out cable.

Supposedly has really nice preamps though.

From what I read of what you want, the Ultralite is the way to go.

Kodama wrote:Duet is just a 2x2 with an annoying break out cable.

Supposedly has really nice preamps though.

From what I read of what you want, the Ultralite is the way to go.

I'm certainly gonna check out the Ultralite. Just trying to do a comprehensive market research.

So I ended up getting myself a Saffire LE and I'm pleasantly surprised!

I'd basically decided on an Ultralite but the store didn't have any in stock and the guy persuaded me to try the Saffire LE, claiming if I didn't need the extra I/O, the Saffire would get me better sound quality and just as stable drivers. Now that could be just him trying to sell what he happened to have in store and I was a bit sceptical since the Saffire is really cheap.

Well I haven't A/B'd it with an Ultralite, but I was really surprised how much better it sounded than my EMU 1616m - and that's a card with a solid (and deserved) rep for its very fine sound quality. After all, it uses the same converters as do the Pro Tools HD192.

I wasn't too impressed with the Saffire's quoted s/n ratio, just 105 dB as compared to the EMU's whopping 120 dB. Not that it should pose much of a problem with most sound sources I record.

What impressed me a lot though was the detail and clarity and stereo image. Some of it may be highly subjective of course, but I found a SoS review where they measured its frequency response and it was nice and flat. Also, jitter is very low, less than half of my 1616m's. Listening to old tracks, it was as if someone just had cleaned the windows (sorry 'bout the crappy metaphor!).

I was even more impressed with the mic pre's. I did find the gain a bit weak as compared to the 1616m. But that aside, the quality boost was really big. I've been using my Oktava MK319 large diaphragm for quite a few years with quite a few interfaces and various outboard mic pre's but I've always found myself doing a fair bit of tweaking in order to get my vocal tracks to 'sit in the mix'. I've been thinking about selling it for years. Not so anymore. With the Saffire, it suddenly sounds just right, with almost no need for tweaking! Now mic pre's and vocal sounds are really subjective stuff and it's difficult to tell how much of the perceived boost in detail, clarity and 'air' that comes from the D/A converters. Nevertheless, the difference is huge and suddenly I can clearly hear how my trusted (Ableton) compressor and de-esser settings muffle the sound. I never noticed that with my 1616m.

I can still return the interface and get myself an Ultralite but I don't think I will. The Saffire doesn't pass Live's CPU test at 128 samples (it's crackle free up to 72% with that setting) but that's still significantly better than my EMU. And if I compare the Saffire's Live 7 performance test result with that of an Ultralite MKIII, made with another MBP Pro 2.4GHz/4 GB, they're the same (51%@8 tracks).

Now can anyone recommend a really transparent software de-esser and compressor?