• Registered: 2017-09-14
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Topic: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

My system:

Processor             Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz   3.60 GHz
Installed RAM     16,0 GB
Mainboard           Gigabyte Z390  AUROS Master -CF
BIOS                      F11c
GPU                       NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
OS                          Win11

The Raydat HDSPe is in PCI-E slot X1_1

The GPU is in slot X8

The 4 Behringer ADAT units are connected by TOSLINK cables and set to slave. The Raydat is set to master. They sync just fine. No word clock.

LatencyMon reports the highest measured interrupt to process latency at 866,50

LatencyMon gives me the green text "Conclusion: Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts"

When i record audio in with 32 sample buffer i have latency of around 11ms, which is around 6-7ms too much according to Ableton, but alright for my use case.

When i send audio out from the Behringer units the latency jumps to around 70ms, about 67ms more than Ableton calculates, and unacceptable for my use case.

I have upgraded from a Fireface UC, which never had trouble utilizing the Behringer units, so i am positive i can get this to work, however I am unsure of how to proceed and would be grateful for any and all help.

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-08-13 13:38:26)

  • ramses
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Re: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

Can you link to the mainboard and the boards manual please?

> The GPU is in slot X8

The GPU should better be placed into a PCIe 3.0 socket with 16 PCIe lanes (not 8).

> LatencyMon reports the highest measured interrupt to process latency at 866,50

As long as you do not get audio drops too early, ok, but quite high.
Did you measure an IDLE system and did you use High Performance energy profile?

> When i record audio in with 32 sample buffer i have latency of around 11ms,
> which is around 6-7ms too much according to Ableton, but alright for my use case.

Your numbers are too high, wondering about your setup / settings.
Are you sure that you choose the proper RME ASIO driver for the HDSPe RayDAT?

I measured the input and output latency of RayDAT to be 2.2ms.
Then maybe 1.05ms for AD/DA of the Behringer, then you have approximately 3,25 at 44.1 kHz.

On Windows and macOS you can measure with RTL Utility.
https://oblique-audio.com/rtl-utility.php

> When i send audio out from the Behringer units the latency jumps to around 70ms,
> about 67ms more than Ableton calculates, and unacceptable for my use case.

Really wondering about your setup and how you measure, the values are IMHO far too high.
So I have doubts that you use valid settings.

You can compare with my numbers here for different products:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/

Maybe you have FX in between (insert or send)? ..

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

3 Reply by lisbent (edited by lisbent 2024-08-13 16:15:41)

  • Registered: 2017-09-14
  • Posts: 10

Re: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

It works now, so you can skip to the ending if you wish. I will leave the individual talking points in for posterity.

>Can you link to the mainboard and the boards manual please?

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z3 … -rev-10#kf
https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/ … 0219_e.pdf

>The GPU should better be placed into a PCIe 3.0 socket with 16 PCIe lanes (not 8).

I have done this now, still same problem.

>As long as you do not get audio drops too early, ok, but quite high.
>Did you measure an IDLE system and did you use High Performance energy profile?

I did measure an idle system, unsure of energy profile, will check now. Assume this is a windows control panel setting and not BIOS?
I did not have High Performance enabled, but it is enabled now. new measurements:

https://i.ibb.co/m9d1SYY/LATENCYMON.png

It seems that both moving the GPU to the correct PCI slot, and choosing the high perfomance energy profile has helped slightly.

>Your numbers are too high, wondering about your setup / settings.
>Are you sure that you choose the proper RME ASIO driver for the HDSPe RayDAT?

I have the HDSPe ASIO (Hammerfall DSP it is called specifically) drivers chosen in Ableton, however it seems i still have the Fireface UC drivers installed. Is this relevant in some way? Or perhaps i have installed the wrong drivers in my eagerness?

>I measured the input and output latency of RayDAT to be 2.2ms.
>Then maybe 1.05ms for AD/DA of the Behringer, then you have approximately 3,25 at 44.1 kHz.

That seems about right with regards to audio into the Raydat, but alas I measure 70ms when i send audio out and then back in from the 8200's

>On Windows and macOS you can measure with RTL Utility.
>https://oblique-audio.com/rtl-utility.php

https://i.ibb.co/GRF4QWc/RTL.png

This is interesting, RTL seems to imply that you are correct and there is something in the analog signal chain introducing the latency. Will investigate.

>Really wondering about your setup and how you measure, the values are IMHO far too high.
>So I have doubts that you use valid settings.

https://i.ibb.co/KjCSh2d/HDSPe1.png
https://i.ibb.co/k9cHYVY/HDSPe2.png

>You can compare with my numbers here for different products:
>https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/

>Maybe you have FX in between (insert or send)?

The only thing in between is a Soundcraft GB4 mixer, it has no on board effects that can manipulate time or otherwise introduce latency.

1 of the Behringer units (ch 25-32) has a broken door (labelled out), could that be the culprit?

Another option is that Ableton introduces the latency. But as far as i can see all the relevant settings are correct. There is no driver error compensation and all the channels have 0 latency compensation as well.

However, there is a new button (i just updated to Ableton 12) I am unfamiliar with labelled "keep latency" that is enabled. AHA! I just disabled it on BOTH the relevant tracks (in & out)  and now its is WORKING! 2ms latency! Sorry to trouble you for a stupid user error like this sad

Very happy i got to the bottom of this, as always RME is rocksolid. I wonder what that "keep latency" button actually does, will go read up on that.
Ableton says very early in the section about the "keep latency" toggle,  that the correct setting for most use cases is to have it toggled off, i wonder why it is on by default then? Good job Ableton. As a final aside, i kept having trouble with just incoming audio not being on time, but after disabling "delay compensation" entirely in the options drop down now everything is smooth.

Only thing i wonder about now is whether or not my BIOS settings could be optimized, would appreciate any help in this regard as well if its not too much trouble. Thank you for guiding me through this Ramses, much appreciated!

4 Reply by vinark (edited by vinark 2024-08-13 16:26:50)

  • vinark
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Re: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

Most of the time it is not bios settings but windows settings and drivers. Here is seems to be the Nvidia driver. Best is to use the studio driver and not the gaming and only install the driver no apps from Nvidia. Ramses has a great tip if after this the Nvidia driver still causes the highest dpc. But if you have no clicks and pops you could also just leave it like it is. You might just as well break something instead of fixing it.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
BFpro fs, 2X HDSP9652 ADI-8AE, 2X HDSP9632

5 Reply by lisbent (edited by lisbent 2024-08-13 20:08:53)

  • Registered: 2017-09-14
  • Posts: 10

Re: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

vinark wrote:

Most of the time it is not bios settings but windows settings and drivers. Here is seems to be the Nvidia driver. Best is to use the studio driver and not the gaming and only install the driver no apps from Nvidia. Ramses has a great tip if after this the Nvidia driver still causes the highest dpc. But if you have no clicks and pops you could also just leave it like it is. You might just as well break something instead of fixing it.

Good advice. I think i might have the GeForce Experience app installed, so i will get on with uninstalling it.

Used all my energy today with getting this nut cracked, so i will try actually doing some real recording tomorrow and report back if i get crackles or anything like that.

  • ramses
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Re: Raydat HDSPe with 4 Behringer Ultragain 8200 problems

>>Can you link to the mainboard and the boards manual please?
> https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z3 … -rev-10#kf
> https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/ … 0219_e.pdf

Thanks.

>> The GPU should better be placed into a PCIe 3.0 socket with 16 PCIe lanes (not 8).
> I have done this now, still same problem.

It was not intended to solve the latency issue. But you reduced "accidentally" the performance of your GPU by 50% by giving the GPU only half the number of PCIe lanes (x8).

Your GPU is designed to use 16 PCIe lanes, so please consider using the proper PCIe socket so that it has the full throughput.
And do not use the PCIe x8 slot below for any other card because this steals again 8 PCIe lanes from the PCIe slot above.
It has to be free.

Furthermore, the PCIe x4 slot should be kept free, if you use an M.2 SSD in the M2P slot. The two slots (PCIe x4 and M.2) share PCIe lanes. If you place a x4 PCIe card in the PCIe x4 slot, then do not use the M2P slot for M.2 otherwise both slots have only 50% of PCIe lanes which reduces both devices' bandwidth by 50%.

The RME RayDAT is a PCIe card which needs only 1 PCIe lanes. I would use one of the three PCIe x1 slots for it, where it fits best. Most likely this is PCIEX1_3.

>> Did you measure an IDLE system and did you use High Performance energy profile?
> I did measure an idle system, unsure of energy profile, will check now. Assume this is a windows control panel setting and not BIOS?

If you do DAW work / audio processing, then you need to disable energy saving in the BIOS for the CPU and on Windows to get lower DPC Latency for optimum performance. Without energy saving and thus lower DPC latency, your CPU core can react quicker to processes, and this is important to process audio in time.
With a well configured system, you can use lower ASIO buffer sizes without getting audio drops.

Use extended forum search to find threads about BIOS and Windows settings.
You can enter my name ramses and search e.g. for the terms LatencyMon.

It boils down to two things

1. in the BIOS
Disable C-/P-/T- States (depends on your BIOS version).
Disable C1N.
Enable TURBO and I would keep Speed Step also enabled for the moment.
With Speed step enabled, you can control the CPU clock inside the Windows energy profile.

2. in Windows, unhide the hidden Energy Profile Ultimate Performance (google for the command how to do that)
Further optimizations of settings are not needed at the moment.
But you could also check in the extended settings to disable energy saving for PCIe if there are any listed.

> I did not have High Performance enabled, but it is enabled now. new measurements:
> https://i.ibb.co/m9d1SYY/LATENCYMON.png
> It seems that both moving the GPU to the correct PCI slot, and choosing the high perfomance
> energy profile has helped slightly.

No, the GPU can exchange now more data with the CPU in games to get better performance.
For DPC latency this most likely did nothing.
But it was important to use a High Performance energy profile to get DPC latency down so that the CPU can process all processes, especially audio processes, quicker without unwanted latency in terms of CPU processing (not audio latency).
If the CPU processes the audio data not in time, then you simply have audio loss.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14