[ITEM]
22.11.2018

Generic Low Latency Asio Driver Cubase Sx3

36

Choosing ASIO drivers, where possible, should help you achieve the lowest latency, using the Control Panel window provided by your particular audio interface. Here you can see the Control Panels for the Echo (left) and Emu (right) ranges, as launched from the Cubase SX Device Setup window.

The control panel is provided by the manufacturer of your audio hardware and is different for each audio interface brand and model. However, control panels for the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver (Windows only) are provided by Steinberg. Kb4yz sstv programs.

If you're tempted to go and make a cup of tea in the gap between pressing a note on your keyboard and hearing it play on your soft synth, you need help, and quickly. The SOS Forums are still awash with queries from new PC musicians asking why they get a delay between pressing a key on their MIDI keyboard and hearing the output of a soft synth on their computer. Sometimes this delay may be as much as a second, making 'real time' performances almost impossible. Newcomers to computer music soon cotton on to the fact that this is because of 'latency' and 'buffer sizes', but are often left wondering just what to adjust and what the 'best' setting is. Setting the correct buffer size is crucial to achieving optimum performance from your audio interface: if it's too small you'll suffer audio clicks and pops, while if it's too large you'll encounter audible delays when performing in real time. The ideal setting can depend on quite a few different factors, including your particular PC and how you work with audio, while the parameters you're able to change, and how best to do it, can also vary considerably depending on which MIDI + Audio application you use. Let's start by briefly recapping on why software buffers are needed.

Generic Low Latency Asio Driver Cubase Sx3

Playing back digitised audio requires a continuous stream of data to be fed from your hard drive or RAM to the soundcard's D-A (digital to analogue) converter before you can listen to it on speakers or headphones, and recording an audio performance also requires a continuous stream of data, this time being converted by the soundcard's A-D (analogue to digital) converter from analogue waveform to digital data and then stored either in RAM or on your hard drive. No computer operating system can do everything at once, so a multitasking operating system such as Windows or Mac OS works by running lots of separate programs or tasks in turns, each one consuming a share of the available CPU (processor) and I/O (Input/Output) cycles. To maintain a continuous audio stream, small amounts of system RAM (buffers) are used to temporarily store a chunk of audio at a time. For playback, the soundcard continues accessing the data within these buffers while Windows goes off to perform its other tasks, and hopefully Windows will get back soon enough to drop the next chunk of audio data into the buffers before the existing data has been used up. Similarly, during audio recording the incoming data slowly fills up a second set of buffers, and Windows comes back every so often to grab a chunk of this and save it to your hard drive. If the buffers are too small and the data runs out before Windows can get back to top them up (playback) or empty them (recording) you'll get a gap in the audio stream that sounds like a click or pop in the waveform and is often referred to as a 'glitch'.

[/ITEM]
[/MAIN]
22.11.2018

Generic Low Latency Asio Driver Cubase Sx3

35

Choosing ASIO drivers, where possible, should help you achieve the lowest latency, using the Control Panel window provided by your particular audio interface. Here you can see the Control Panels for the Echo (left) and Emu (right) ranges, as launched from the Cubase SX Device Setup window.

The control panel is provided by the manufacturer of your audio hardware and is different for each audio interface brand and model. However, control panels for the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver (Windows only) are provided by Steinberg. Kb4yz sstv programs.

If you're tempted to go and make a cup of tea in the gap between pressing a note on your keyboard and hearing it play on your soft synth, you need help, and quickly. The SOS Forums are still awash with queries from new PC musicians asking why they get a delay between pressing a key on their MIDI keyboard and hearing the output of a soft synth on their computer. Sometimes this delay may be as much as a second, making 'real time' performances almost impossible. Newcomers to computer music soon cotton on to the fact that this is because of 'latency' and 'buffer sizes', but are often left wondering just what to adjust and what the 'best' setting is. Setting the correct buffer size is crucial to achieving optimum performance from your audio interface: if it's too small you'll suffer audio clicks and pops, while if it's too large you'll encounter audible delays when performing in real time. The ideal setting can depend on quite a few different factors, including your particular PC and how you work with audio, while the parameters you're able to change, and how best to do it, can also vary considerably depending on which MIDI + Audio application you use. Let's start by briefly recapping on why software buffers are needed.

Generic Low Latency Asio Driver Cubase Sx3

Playing back digitised audio requires a continuous stream of data to be fed from your hard drive or RAM to the soundcard's D-A (digital to analogue) converter before you can listen to it on speakers or headphones, and recording an audio performance also requires a continuous stream of data, this time being converted by the soundcard's A-D (analogue to digital) converter from analogue waveform to digital data and then stored either in RAM or on your hard drive. No computer operating system can do everything at once, so a multitasking operating system such as Windows or Mac OS works by running lots of separate programs or tasks in turns, each one consuming a share of the available CPU (processor) and I/O (Input/Output) cycles. To maintain a continuous audio stream, small amounts of system RAM (buffers) are used to temporarily store a chunk of audio at a time. For playback, the soundcard continues accessing the data within these buffers while Windows goes off to perform its other tasks, and hopefully Windows will get back soon enough to drop the next chunk of audio data into the buffers before the existing data has been used up. Similarly, during audio recording the incoming data slowly fills up a second set of buffers, and Windows comes back every so often to grab a chunk of this and save it to your hard drive. If the buffers are too small and the data runs out before Windows can get back to top them up (playback) or empty them (recording) you'll get a gap in the audio stream that sounds like a click or pop in the waveform and is often referred to as a 'glitch'.