Small buffers during tracking, large during mixing?

Steinberg Lounge
#1

Hi

Do you folks change your buffer like referenced in the title to this post?

If so:

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  1. Do you find it a bit of a pain mixing at high buffers during mixing, in that the cursor isn’t exactly over the audio you are hearing (so it’s a little harder to make precise cuts)?

  2. Is there any reason to set a low buffer during tracking if I have that Steinberg hardware w/ zero latency at high buffers, even w/ control room inserts on (and hardware dsp)? (Maybe to answer my own question, maybe it’s important if you want to send different insert effects to each cue mix?)

Thanks for any thoughts -

#2

depending on the weight to the project, the sample buffers grow. Plugins add latency too.


I only experience GUI lags at higher buffers. Never experienced lag viewing or editing the timeline.

#3

Thanks so much, Woodcrest Studio!

I’m so glad you answered … I had no idea that higher buffers could lead to problems … in my experience on my last underpowered computer, all the evil was in the smaller buffers, and the larger buffers always wore white hats.

Stuff to chew over, because (based on that history) I have taken to setting the buffer size to max on my projects as I start using my new computer. Not that I’ve run into problems on this more powerful one, I had just carried the practice over. Now I have to actually think - DARN!

#4

Before I started using a separate machine for running all my VSTi’s on, I tracked with the lowest buffers I could get away with comfortably at 1st, then as the project started getting congested, I had to switch to a much a larger buffer. I can now keep everything to the minimum.

#5

You see the thing is I think I can track (with inserts) through the Control Room with as large buffers as I want and still get zero latency , with some dsp through my Steinberg UR28M.

So I’ve started doing just that - max buffer size, track with inserts and everything is zero latency.

But I haven’t done it enough to be sure it’s what it seems … just that so far it looks/sounds pretty good.

#6

I’ve had the same experience :wink:

#7

You must have direct monitoring enabled. :mrgreen:

#8

The reason for me raising buffers (and I’m sure this is per usual) is that when my song projects got busy, I started experiencing crackles, pops, various tracks drifting in & out of time with each other, and then crashes. Mind you I’m talking about overloading a Win XP 32 bit 4/GB ram machine. A necessary low latency for tracking say, guitars with Amplitube soft amp sim could only be used at the earliest stages, which didn’t always work that way. That’s why I gravitated toward hardware amp sims, to ease unnecessary loads…which reducing/eliminating loads became my main theme.