ASIO buffer size, wtf?

this has not happen nearly as often working on past projects, but there are more issues with crackling/distortion when recording. changing buffer size solves the audio issue- but only before i alter a track again.

this is so frustrating! i have adjusted buffer size to the highest setting possible, but still have this problem. what is the optimum setting for ASIO4ALL with a direct connection from amp to PC?

i don’t really understand the whole concept of buffering, actually.

Some people will tell you that you should not use ASIO4ALL, I see it coming already.

But, there is no problem with ASIO4ALL.
The problem necessarily comes from somewhere else.
What is you CPU ?

Best video I’ve seen to help with understanding buffer sizes and audio performance

hope it helps

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I really am confuse why people use ASIO4ALL when you need a proper Audio Interface with its dedicated driver for super low latency. Someone enlighten me as to the use of ASIO4ALL other than replacing Windows Audio Drivers

Of course ASIO4ALL is usually for when people don’t have an audio interface…
That said, it is also very useful when doing complex routing with the need of accessing Windows devices, or for aggregating multiple interfaces at once.
Nothing confusing at all.

what audio interface do you recommend for a direct connection with Rumble amp instead of ASIO4ALL?

IF you are going from the amp USB out directly into Cubase then ASIO4ALL is the best choice. My question would be does the AMP come with a driver and also WHICH Rumble are we talking about?

What are your settings on ASIO4ALL?

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Aggregate would be the key one for me, now I remember. I haven’t used it since using it with Reaper years ago. .

My POINT was if you are recording an amp one usually mics it up hence my confusion.
I re read it and see what he is saying now.

ASIO4ALL got updated recently and it works really well, with multi-client, etc…

@robyn2020 Are you talking about the Fender Rumble ? If so then I got one too :smile:
This amp has a line out, so I guess you simply plug it into your PC’s line input ?
Also can you please tell more about your PC specs ? Is that a desktop, laptop, what model, what CPU ?

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@Louis_R

Yes, Fender Rumble directly connects to my PC’s line input. This is a laptop: HP ProBook 4545s. (I have looked everywhere for info on how to find the serial #. The HP website told me to download an Assistant to help find this, blah blah blah i’m hopeless!)

@shanabit Fender Rumble LT25
I don’t think it comes with a driver. But maybe I am wrong?

@rockdude9k Nice video. Thanks!

After watching this, I’m not sure if it is actually a CPU issue, since i do not need too much time exporting the file to create an audio mixdown. HOWEVER, it does take a very long time to start my PC. But this has always been the case - even when I recorded songs that did not have any issues.

@shanabit Oh, i found that I need to specifically download Fender ASIO driver. Thanks for pointing this out!

Only problem: Fender website link to driver https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/214343123-How-do-I-know-which-ASIO-Driver-to-use- reads PAGE NOT FOUND. So i have to contact Fender support and wait a few days before getting an answer. Boo…

I am inpatient. Must record NOW!

What’s your soundcard?
You should not use asio4all
I did in 2001 :rofl:
But soundcards have since developed
And you should be using the specific driver for your soundcard.
For example you can’t get better low latency drivers than RME audio interfaces.
Most modern interfaces will suffice. But RME is the most stable and by far the best.

I just saw this

And yeah… Don’t expect the fender rumble to have amazing low latency drivers.

I’m now using a Universal Audio volt 276. Pretty happy with it. Although I wish the RTL was better

So i tried to download the Universal Fender driver. This was the convo i had with Fender Customer Support that left me angry and extremely disappointed :

Cory: Hi Robyn, thanks for contacting Fender how can we help today?
Robyn: I would like to download Fender_Universal_ASIO_2_10_F. However when i click on the link, PAGE NOT FOUND. Could you please redirect me to the site where I can download this driver?
Cory: The driver may be outdated and unsupported at this point, however let me see if we have it available some place else.

Cory: Looks like the links are all broken, sorry about that

what??? GRR…!!!

Hey Robyn, I don’t think there is a dedicated driver for the Rumble LT25, as stated on the user manual :

No external driver is needed to connect to an Apple computer. To connect to a Windows-based computer, the user must download the ASIO driver setup with Fender Mustang device, (link not working)

To me, the download for Windows is just a generic driver, just like ASIO4ALL.
If there is no dedicated driver then you have no other choice than using ASIO4ALL.
That said, I would connect it via USB rather than the physical input, you’ll probably have better audio quality.

However your computer doesn’t seem to be suited for audio processing, although here you just want to record one single track at a time, which should not be an issue.

On your first post, you said that in the past you didn’t experience that much crackling, so maybe at some point you have installed some programs that run in the background and use the CPU actively.
I would bet on that rather than anything else.
Remember, your CPU really is not that fast for working on audio (AMD A6-4400M), so your PC needs to be as clean as possible.

Also, have you tried setting the Power Plan to High Performance in Windows ?
By default it is set to Balanced, and on laptops it can eventually switch to Energy Saving when it’s not plugged, and throttles the CPU too hard.
Some laptop manufacturers even put custom power plan settings and it can throttle even when you choose Balanced.
So try this first !



Just because you can export/render the audio with no issue doesn’t mean there won’t be issues with real-time processing.
The CPU handles real-time and rendering completely differently, one should not be confused with the other.

With real-time processing, such as playback, recording and exporting (when the Real-Time Export setting is enabled), the CPU simply cannot take more or less time, since the audio stream has to be processed in real time.
So, if the CPU cannot process that much instructions under a given amount of time, then the audio will start to crackle, because the audio fragments that haven’t been processed in time will be skipped.

So, the buffer basically sets how much time the computer has to process the audio in order to output it in real time.
The lower it is, the lower the latency, but at the cost of more CPU stress/usage.
Higher buffer values will relax the CPU but at the cost of higher latency.
If you are experiencing crackling audio even at highest buffer settings, the chances that it is caused by you PC not being fast enough are really high, or, you most probably have other programs running in parallel and taking up the CPU ressources.
If the CPU isn’t fast enough initially, such an issue can surface very quickly.

With rendering however, low performance CPUs will only take longer, and high performance ones will finish the task much faster.
There is no such buffer or crackling audio with rendering, it is just a matter of how much time the computer will take to render the audio.
The CPU is no longer restricted to a maximum computing time set by the buffer size, but when doing so, it is unable to output the audio in real-time, because it can go much faster or much slower, all depending on how big is the project and the speed of the CPU.

I hope this helps !

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@robyn2020 This YouTube video might help with setting up ASIO4all, until you get a another Audio Interface. He also has Windows OS tweaks if you search his YouTube channel, for getting better audio performance.

@Louis_R You are right; my PC was a messy piece of bleh. It took, like, 5+ min. to start. So i went to the local computer shop and got a new hard drive. PROBLEM SOLVED.

ASIO4ALL works just fine, and now so does my laptop. So…happy… :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Thanks to all of you for your support. I love the Cubase community, and I will answer questions as soon as I am a pro teehee

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