I'm a computer systems engineer, no it's not heresay that computers prefer powers of 2, but it depends on the way the software is programmed. The computer software can be more efficient if you use x^2, but only if the software was designed that way. I don't believe Ableton's audio buffers are designed this way.southsounder wrote:Utter hearsay, but I was told by someone at some point that in general the buffer size likes base 2 numbers e.g. 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. I have no scientific evidence or knowledge that there is anything to this theory, but I always use them - just in case...
FWIW I run 128 on my two AF12's at 24/48 with very little issues - I never change the buffer setting. I do change to 16/44.1 on occasion when collaborating with other folks who use that setting, and I've never had a problem.
One final thought - I'm still running 10.5.8, I wonder if 10.5 has a more stable implementation of the aggregate device system than 10.6+?
Can I ask - what Mac hardware are you running? I'm running an iMac 2011 27", but I'm curious what you're having success on, because I've never got anywhere near 128 samples buffer with 2x AudioFire12s! One thing I haven't tried is driving the whole system from my MacBook Pro.
Thanks for the detailed system info! I haven't tried OS X 10.5, however I've had serious problems with aggregate audio in 10.6.x... In earlier versions of 10.6 the computer wouldn't start with aggregate devices, and Audio MIDI prefs wouldn't open and would hang the whole system (not kernel panic, just hang the entire computer). The only fix was to delete the aggregate device with the audio interfaces disconnected.
I don't have any concrete evidence, but I also suspect there is a problem with aggregate devices.
Can I please also ask what AudioFire12 driver version you're using?
Thank you!
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