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CbB Low latency performance


Noel Borthwick

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I am not in the habit of playing virtual instruments while recording, having long ago established a methodology wherein I play and monitor hardware synths, record their outputs as MIDI and only apply soft synths after all performances have been recorded. That way I can keep buffers at max all the time while ignoring latency entirely.

The only time I'd ever lower the buffers would be when experimenting with a new VI in real time. A couple weeks ago I was doing just that and had set my buffers to 64 samples, IMO the practical maximum for realtime playing at 44.1 KHz. Then I simply forgot to set them back to their normal values. By the time I noticed my mistake, I had a full project going with multiple heavy-duty samplers (Trilian, Kontakt, Superior Drummer) and fx, including Ozone. 

Sorry, Noel, but it didn't occur to me at the time that I owed all that to improved DAW efficiency. 

Knowing that it's now practical to track with smaller buffers will likely change the way I do things in the future. Way to go, Team Cakewalk!

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3 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I am not in the habit of playing virtual instruments while recording, having long ago established a methodology wherein I play and monitor hardware synths, record their outputs as MIDI and only apply soft synths after all performances have been recorded. That way I can keep buffers at max all the time while ignoring latency entirely.

The only time I'd ever lower the buffers would be when experimenting with a new VI in real time. A couple weeks ago I was doing just that and had set my buffers to 64 samples, IMO the practical maximum for realtime playing at 44.1 KHz. Then I simply forgot to set them back to their normal values. By the time I noticed my mistake, I had a full project going with multiple heavy-duty samplers (Trilian, Kontakt, Superior Drummer) and fx, including Ozone. 

Sorry, Noel, but it didn't occur to me at the time that I owed all that to improved DAW efficiency. 

Knowing that it's now practical to track with smaller buffers will likely change the way I do things in the future. Way to go, Team Cakewalk!

I wouldn't track a big project at 16 samples. It would be ahem a bit fragile :)
There are also improvements to MIDI buffer performance in the engine coming for the next release as well as an overhaul to ASIO buffer management.
I guess nobody noticed a subtle giveaway of some changes in the video lol.

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3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

I guess nobody noticed a subtle giveaway of some changes in the video lol.

It must be pretty subtle... unless it has to do with the Ozone 9 rectangle in the FX bin being blue, but that might be related to a feature I've never used. I'm really not familiar with half of what's included in the product *sigh*

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@scook I suppose I could drop that size to 32 samples. The thing is that the smaller the buffer size is the higher the CPU load is, so if someone is turning on load balancing to primarily save CPU this could not be useful. Give it a try with 32 or 16 samples and check if you see benefits when running your audio interface at 48 or 64 samples. (Load balancing only kicks in if the actual buffer size is a multiple of MinPlubnginLoadBalancingBufferSamples)

I'll also give it another look next week. I can't think of any other settings that would be candidates for changing.

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