I actually have Sonar but that forum has been closed so I'm posting here instead.
I have my buffers set to 64 samples (but it won't go lower than 4 buffers without glitches so really that is the same as one buffer of 256 samples), I use 24-bit sound at 96 KHz.
This gives me my best latency of 35 ms (it had been 60 ms before I went online and followed all the advice I could find).
All over the internet I see people saying that a buffer of 1024(!) samples should give me latency of 23 ms at 44.1 KHz. That's frustrating to say the least. I'm using a buffer 4 times smaller and more than double the sample rate. My maths skills tell me that should work out as a very low latency.
I get the same latency when recording MIDI (yes, even if I'm using my keyboard as the sound source and the PC is only acting as a sequencer).
Switching to ASIO drivers increases the latency by around 10-20 ms.
None of this matches up with the advice I read online so I am at a loss as to how to go about improving this.
The flaws in my setup up are:
1) I'm using a laptop (first and last time I'm wasting money on one of those)
2) It's only an i5 (I thought battery life was a valid concern but I only ever use it plugged into the wall so oops)
3) The sound card (Realtek) is just a chip on the motherboard (i.e. a toy)
[I'm aware I should not really expect <14 ms because I don't possess the hardware to achieve that but 30 ms is huge]
I currently find the PC unusable so record using my Tascam multitrack but it would be convenient to be able to use the PC as a sketchpad for times when I'm not at home and I get ideas.
I have tried asking Acer for advice but they took 3 months to tell me that they have no idea and would I like to book it in for one of their technicians to check whether there are any hardware faults (not free). I'm noticing a pattern that not many people seem to understand why latency matters. It used to affect frames per second in games so there used to be motivation to reduce latency but now it seems to be more about how many gimmicky features it offers rather than performance. I see people discussing things like slightly delayed footstep sounds and other unimportant things like that.
Can anyone help?
