How to improve latency when recording audio?

[DallasSteve]

My laptop handles Midi recording pretty well when I am developing a song, but when I start to add audio tracks I experience latency problems (I think that is the right name).  Where I notice it most is after I have recorded a few audio clips when I click Play or Record sometimes the project will freeze for a few seconds.  It will not play right away and when it starts to play it will be delayed at first.  If I wait a few seconds the problem goes away and  I can record another clip.  Then the problem comes back over and over.

I'm not ready to buy a stronger laptop.  I'm looking for strategies to reduce this problem.  If I freeze extra Audio tracks that seems to help, but I can't freeze the track I'm working on at the moment, hence I still have the problem.  One time I froze my Midi tracks that used a guitar synth and that seemed to help. 

Is freezing tracks a good strategy to solve this problem? 

Do I also need to remove the synth or is it no longer a drain on resources if the track is frozen? 

Are there other strategies to get around this problem?

 

[reginaldStjohn]

What you are experiencing is not called latency as it is normally described. What you seem to be describing is a delay between a button press and the application responding.  This is probably a symptom of your laptop as a whole being used as an audio system. Everything from the audio interface (audio card) to the hard drive in your computer could affect this.

With that being said,  you could try some of the things listed here (https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013376/Windows-Optimization-Guide).

Freezing synths is a good way to free up some computer resources. Freezing audio tracks only helps if they have plugins inserted into their tracks that you are freezing into the audio. Otherwise freezing audio tracks doesn't really change anything.

 

Edited September 18, 2021 by reginaldStjohn

[DallasSteve]

Reginald

Thanks, that link has some good tips there for reducing CPU usage from other applications.  I will try to maximize there and see how that goes.  As far as the Drivers updates, I glaze over when I see that because whenever I have a Windows problem they say run the troubleshooter or update the drivers.  Neither of those (almost) ever work.

Edited September 18, 2021 by DallasSteve

[Promidi]

What are your PC specs?  What audio interface are you using.  What driver mode are you using?

[DallasSteve]

5 hours ago, Promidi said:

What are your PC specs?  What audio interface are you using.  What driver mode are you using?

I'm not sure how to answer those questions.  I included a screenshot below of the Device Specifications in Windows Settings.  I haven't installed a separate audio interface.  I think I'm using Realtek or whatever the default for Windows 10 is called. 

Driver mode?  I haven't got a clue.  Reminds me of an interview with Ringo Starr.  George Harrison told him "I've got this new song, it's in 7/8 time ".  (Here Comes The Sun)  Ringo replied "Yeah, so?  He might as well talk to me in Arabic."  In other words, that's over my head.

Edited September 19, 2021 by DallasSteve

[57Gregy]

With Cakewalk open, press P (Preferences) on the computer keyboard.
You should see everything you need to know in there.
 

 

[David Baay]

Poor CPU performance should not not change latency, it just leads to pops, crackles, gaps, and eventually a complete dropouts of the audio engine. The issue with the guitar synth was probably Plugin Delay Compensation (PDC). I posted in a thread a while ago about some acoustic guitar synth that had 50ms (!) of latency built-in. I guess you were supposed to record the MIDI using some other synth sound (or sequence it), and then substitute the guitar synth...? Some guitar sims will add some latency, but not usually so much that they become unplayable. In any case, when you start getting latency, you should check for plugins that need PDC - typically these are intended to be used at mixing/mastering phase of production, and not while tracking.

Synths/samplers that stream samples from disk (or use up all your RAM) or use physical modeling can also overwhelm an under-powered machine,  especially a laptop that has both a slow CPU and a single,  slow,  spinning drive). Raising disk buffers, and making sure that all CPU 'throttling' and power-saving functions are disabled can help, along with other common optimizations like disabling virus scanning of audio-related folders, and turning off WiFi and Bluetooth in BIOS.

Optimizing Deferred Producer Call (DPC)  latency  (not to be confused with audio latency or PDC, but the ability to run small ASIO buffer sizes to get low audio latency is dependent on low, stable DPC latency) is a good place to start:

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

[Byron Dickens]

Except for amp sims, of course, I hold off on the processing and effects until mixdown.