• Registered: 2010-09-06
  • Posts: 4

Topic: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

Hello Everyone.
I'm a first time RME user from Perth, Western Australia.

I just purchased and installed a new FF400 on the weekend.
I absolutely love Totalmix and I am very pleased with the sound quality of the box so far. The assistance I have received from the forum has also been invaluable in sorting out the minor FW driver/optimization issues. Thankyou.
This leads me to my question.
I'm getting nearly faultless playback of full mixes at 512 samples buffer using the fireface ASIO drivers, but I have heard that these units can achieve much lower rates. I am running an Intel i7 870 processor with a gigabyte p55 mobo and TI chipset FW and I was curious as to what sort of latency levels people are achieving with the FF400 units in a Windows 7 PC environment playing back full mixes and/or multi-tracking (without overruns).
I would like some feedback so I can set an achievable goal once I begin optimizing my system this evening.
I will post my own results in the morning.

Thankyou again.

  • Registered: 2007-05-09
  • Posts: 174

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

What does "nearly" faultless mean?

3 Reply by rickjames (edited by rickjames 2010-09-07 02:54:13)

  • Registered: 2010-09-06
  • Posts: 4

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

Playing back full mixes and multi-tracking in Sonar 8.5, I'm now achieving 6ms @ 256 samples with no detectable overruns or audio glitches.

I ran DPC Latency checker (www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml) to give me a baseline figure and then followed the helpful advice here :

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/ … hp?id=1071

Disabling wifi, virus protection and firewall seemed to make the biggest difference bringing the max figure on DPC down from over 2000us to around 250us.

It would be great to hear from anyone who is able to achieve any better than this in a Windows 7 PC environment or if there are some other optimization procedures I could add.

I am happily functioning at this level but it would always be nice to see what is achievable.

Thanks again.

  • Registered: 2010-09-06
  • Posts: 4

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

Laurence Payne wrote:

What does "nearly" faultless mean?

It means I have a poor grasp of the English language. Apologies for my sloppy and inadvertant oxymoron.
To clarify, I was experiencing no audible imperfections (to my ears) while my sequencer software was detecting a handful of overruns during a multi-track playback. Now I have run DPC checker I am able to make a more accurate assessment.

What sort of latency figures are you achieving Laurence?

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

rickjames wrote:
Disabling wifi, virus protection and firewall seemed to make the biggest difference bringing the max figure on DPC down from over 2000us to around 250us.

According to your hardware 250 is still high. But I think it is W7 fault. Using Intel i7 720 and XP I got more than thirteen times lower max value (18ms) with all peripherals enabled. Needles to say, audio playback is absolutely faultless (@96 samples & 48 kHz).

6 Reply by Laurence Payne (edited by Laurence Payne 2010-09-07 11:13:57)

  • Registered: 2007-05-09
  • Posts: 174

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

rickjames wrote:
Laurence Payne wrote:

What does "nearly" faultless mean?

It means I have a poor grasp of the English language. Apologies for my sloppy and inadvertant oxymoron.
To clarify, I was experiencing no audible imperfections (to my ears) while my sequencer software was detecting a handful of overruns during a multi-track playback. Now I have run DPC checker I am able to make a more accurate assessment.

What sort of latency figures are you achieving Laurence?

My FF 800 is set at 256 samples, which I find quite acceptable when playing VST Instruments in real time.  So I've never really thought in terms of "achieving" a lower figure :-)  This is using Windows 7/32 on an Intel Q6700 desktop machine at 2.66 Ghz.  I must admit to often forgetting to disable Internet and network for an audio session, and it seems to make no difference :-)

When I get an idle moment I must experiment to see how low I can go.

I would expect to have to be rather more careful if using a laptop computer.  DPC on this machine with everything enabled shows well under 150us.  I've never achieved this on a notebook machine.  Possibly because battery and power management are so central to a notebook's architecture.

  • Registered: 2010-09-06
  • Posts: 4

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

I have a completely new system to go with new OS (Win7) and the fireface 400, so thats why I'm flying a little blind at present. Thanks for the feedback. It all helps.

I have installed the latest Win7 updates and I'm now able to get 256sample buffer (6ms) with no overruns on full project mixes and all peripherals active (wifi, usb, virus protection etc). Sounding tremendous and fully functional.

DPC latency checker is still showing maximums around 250-300us. There are some minor spikes on program switching but it always stays in the green and the RME drivers seem solid so its not affecting any of my functionality. That said I have I have only tested the analog front end, so I will see how rock-solid the digital side is next. Wish me luck.

  • Registered: 2007-05-09
  • Posts: 174

Re: First time RME user Windows 7 optimization goals

Is there any particular reason you NEED lower latency than that?