• Registered: 2021-05-15
  • Posts: 9

Topic: High latency

Good morning,

in a Ableton Live Set with 1 midi track only, loaded with a basic piano instrument (FM Piano Classic), by pressing 10 keys at the same time I always get a CPU overload, and eventually little sound distortions. I've been able to completely avoid this only by setting the BabyFace's buffer to the highest, 2048 samples. I'm currently using 48000 Hz as sample rate and ASIO driver in Ableton.
Given my hardware, is this normal or could i find ways to decrease that latency?
Thank you.

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite
  • waedi
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  • From: Swiss Zürich
  • Registered: 2020-12-08
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Re: High latency

It's normal. That basic plugin seems to be too basic for handling 10-times-polyphony.

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue
  • Registered: 2021-05-15
  • Posts: 9

Re: High latency

Thanks for the reply.
I lowered the sample rate to 44100 Hz, and everything seems not to overload; does that make a big difference, in terms of sound's quality, at the end?

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite

4 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-01-13 18:59:31)

  • ramses
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Re: High latency

44.1 kHz /16 is still the de facto standard for CDs and nobody of us can hear above 20 kHz.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2019-11-06
  • Posts: 140

Re: High latency

I’d say that your PC is seriously under-spec’d. What you’ve described are very common symptoms of an underpowered machine.

  • Registered: 2021-05-15
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Re: High latency

Maddcow wrote:

I’d say that your PC is seriously under-spec’d. What you’ve described are very common symptoms of an underpowered machine.

I could only increase the RAM, reaching 32 GB. Does that make a difference? Or is music production mostly related to CPU only?

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite

7 Reply by gastromush (edited by gastromush 2022-01-13 23:14:58)

  • Registered: 2021-05-15
  • Posts: 9

Re: High latency

ramses wrote:

44.1 kHz /16 is still the de facto standard for CDs and nobody of us can hear above 20 kHz.

Ok, thank you. And what about bit depth? I saw the BabyFace runs at 24 by default. Again, does that make a difference with 16, in terms of final audio's quality, or what we can perceive of that?

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite
  • ramses
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Re: High latency

gastromush wrote:
ramses wrote:

44.1 kHz /16 is still the de facto standard for CDs and nobody of us can hear above 20 kHz.

Ok, thank you. And what about bit depth? I saw the BabyFace runs at 24 by default. Again, does that make a difference with 16, in terms of final audio's quality, or what we can perceive of that?

When mixing you use the higher bit depth.
During mastering you render audio for the final purpose (cd, broadcast, vinyl, streaming music/mp3, ...)
44.1 kHz /16 is the de facto standard for CDs and delives sufficient dynamics.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • mkok
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Re: High latency

You should be ok with 16gb of ram unless you are loading big vst/ sample libraries. The i5 may be getting a bit long in the youth though.

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.
  • Registered: 2019-11-06
  • Posts: 140

Re: High latency

gastromush wrote:
Maddcow wrote:

I’d say that your PC is seriously under-spec’d. What you’ve described are very common symptoms of an underpowered machine.

I could only increase the RAM, reaching 32 GB. Does that make a difference? Or is music production mostly related to CPU only?

Whilst increasing RAM can sometimes help, softsynths are most taxing on CPU and what you’ve described is something I’ve seen many, many, many times with friends/colleagues etc when their machine CPUs aren’t adequate to the task. Audio interfaces relieve some of the burden from the host machine but when softsynths overtax a computer’s CPU, there’s very little you can do….other than get a new machine.

However, have you tried using ASIO4ALL? I’ve seen a number of cases where using this alternative ASIO driver can make a considerable difference with latency on PC.

  • ramses
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Re: High latency

Please do not recommend such bad setups, we just had this in another thread.
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 67#p181067

ASIO4ALL leads to an unsupported setup. It is counter productive to the concept of an ASIO driver to fully bypass the windows sound system and having direct access to the recording HW with the goal of a) stability and b) least latency.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2021-05-15
  • Posts: 9

Re: High latency

Yea, honestly i wouldn't deviate from using the RME's ASIO driver. I don't know what's wrong tbh, it sounds strange to me that a single instrument (although being a rack), could be so resources demanding. Before upgrading this CPU i should be sure the problem doesn't stem from software.

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite
  • Registered: 2021-05-15
  • Posts: 9

Re: High latency

I found out how to partially solve the problem: in the Windows 10 power settings, i set the minimum CPU usage at 100% (high performance profile, whereas the balanced one, usually set as the default one, keeps that at 0%), and this prevents the sounds' dropouts particularly when the sound kicks in, let say during the attack, because i guess the CPU is already at 100 instead of getting there suddenly from 0. Of course there are no relevant changes during sustained sounds.

Thank you for the answers!

i5-6400 2.7 GHz, 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz
RME BabyFace Pro
M-Audio Axiom 61
Ableton Live 11.3.3 Suite

14 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-01-21 12:48:25)

  • ramses
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Re: High latency

Much depends on the suitability of your system for near-realtime application. On some systems it's easier, on others it's almost impossible, you can only increase the ASIO buffer (which is necessary depending on the project / ASIO load) to mitigate high DPC latencies (e.g. caused by bad drivers).

However, it is always recommended to deactivate any form of energy saving in the BIOS and also in Windows or the CPU core parking, which is unfortunately activated in all standard energy profiles, even at maximum performance.
With a desktop system you basically have higher performance and less problems to dissipate heat to avoid CPU/GPU throttling and associated clock/performance degradation due to heat.

There are many threads in this forum where other forum members and I have given valuable suggestions on how to use LatencyMon to examine your system to see if it is suitable for real-time audio processing, identify bad drivers, or what Windows settings are useful to optimize the system for audio.

You can also quickly browse for the hidden microsoft energy profile "ultimate performace" which AFAIR has CPU core parking already disabled.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wi … olicy.aspx
You might still need to tweak some extended settings therein e.g. to disable USB or PCIe powersaving, check the options.

Some other optimizations you find diretly here in one of the last recent threads ..
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=34582

Use the extended forum search and look for latencymon OR dpc OR latency
For getting the threads where I contributed to, add my username in the appropriate field of the forum search

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13