Hi there all,
I have simple little question & just hoping I can get feedback.
Hi there,
I recently bought a Presonus Quantum 2626 Thunderbolt to add to my studio after I’d built a new pc Asus MB, intel 14900k 128gb ram (4 sticks) M 2 hard drives etc.
My simple question is, On the smallest buffer setting (16), if I open a new Cubase pro 14 project with nothing loaded at all, is it normal for the ASIO peak meter in cubase to go up every few seconds to 25%-50%?? If I increase the buffer, that drops down significantly but on the lowest (16), which has virtually no latency it goess up & down a lot. It doesn’t show any dropouts though. Should it do that or have I got a problem? Latencymon & dpc latency checker say all is good most of the time with the very occasional spike which says I have a problem. But I have been trying to get it down lower for ages now & it still does this 25-50% on the cubase PEAK asio meter. Please can someone let me know if it’s normal or not?
I have followed all the guides to make a pc good for Audio/Daws etc & I have tried everything in the BIOS. I have tried turning off loads of other devices, got windows on high performance, everything! I can still use it on quite empty projects & I can always up that by changing the buffer but I was hoping I could use it on the lowest buffer setting a bit more.
Any feedback or help would be great thanks.
Kind regards, Codsworth
I have a 13700k system and my lowest buffer is 32 samples(I’m on MacOS, Metric Halo interface). In practice, hardly usable with a 32 samples buffer. Doesn’t make much difference if I use Logic Pro or Cubase. A buffer of 32 samples is just too small.
64 samples is OK for most projects though.
If you want lower latencies, you will need to resort to hardware or DSP mixers.
Thanks for the reply. No that’s exactly the sort of thing I wanted to hear about. So you think that asking a 16 sample buffer to perform with a half full project or even a virtually empty project is asking too much? And in your case that is normal to have those 25% -50% hits on the ASIO PEAK meter at such low buffer settings? In my case 16s & yours 32s.
Kind regards, Codsworth
Yes and yes.
On my system I have to use 256 samples buffer size to calm things down. My system is not specifically created for music production, it is rather an everyday computer.
Does a higher buffer size irritate you when playing a virtual instrument?
No, I just put together a brand new powerful pc, bought the quantum 2626 thunderbolt because it’s supposed to be one of lowest latency audio interfaces out there & just wondered if it was normal for the Cubase peak meter to behave like that on low buffer settings.
Regards, Codsworth
I have an RME interface, which are widely considered as the best performing interfaces, and they don’t even offer a buffer sizes below 48 samples, which knowing RME is on purpose, because everything below that even on modern systems is asking for trouble.
Think about it this way: 16 samples at 48KHz means that each DSP process (plugins, internal EQ etc) must complete its calculations in less than ~330 nanoseconds. And compared to say 128 samples, it means eight times as much function calls to the plugin/process, which is additional overhead.
Frankly, I am still in awe that computers manage to do real time audio at 128 samples (which is my preferred size) without problems, and have done so for a long time now.
Some RME interfaces can go down to 32 samples. The later UFX ones eg. if I don’t misremember.
The difference between 32 and 48 samples is mostly negligible in terms of latency however.
