Latency on Aux Track Input?

[jonathanprice]

Just experienced the same problem. I updated to 9.1 and my projects had noticeable latency. I tracked the problem to an aux track I was using to monitor a satellite VEP. I'm set up so that I send my soft synths to an aux called "VI." I can send this aux to all the audio tracks, but I also send it to another monitoring aux track that routes it to my headphones/monitors. When I placed the VEP track next to the monitoring aux track you could see the levels in the original VI showed very low latency, but the monitoring aux track showed quite a lot. If I switched the output of the VI aux to "headphones" there was almost no latency (direct hardware playthrough). So the latency was coming from the one monitoring aux. This is the same template I've used for years, and never had a problem until I upgraded to 9.1. Additionally, when I opened my quadrophonic template, which is set up the same way but with quad tracks, there was very little latency through the monitoring aux, same as always. Something in my upgrade to 9.1 has made my monitoring aux latent, and only in stereo mode, not quadrophonic.

[James Steele]

I believe that was my mistake posting this though. Aux tracks have always had latency on them. You have to record enable an normal audio track and monitor through that.

[jonathanprice]

That could be true, but it's never been any noticeable latency for me. And, the quadro aux monitor is showing no noticeable latency. And I never experienced any until this week.

[cleamon]

It turns out that if I monitor my audio inputs on my 24I/O in DP using a stereo aux track I’m getting latency and hearing the synth behind the beat. On the other hand, if I monitor it through an actual stereo audio track I hear things in time without latency. Is this normal? I haven’t loaded up some of these old projects using hardware synths in a long while, but I don’t remember it being that way.

This is the behavior I have experienced (forever? at least since DP 7.x). I used to set the buffer setting real low (less than 128) which helped. Then I started rendering the external tracks to audio - even with large buffers this worked fine but meant that if I altered the MIDI, I had to render again. Then I discovered that if I use a stereo audio track with input enabled, the latency went away. That's my MO now.

[b.g.]

I too run a PCIe system, see sig. I monitor outboard hardware synths via mono and stereo Aux tracks. For me latency is imperceptible.

[David Polich]

James, I feel your pain. I have a lot of hardware synths and record them all the time. Are you using a hardware mixer?

One reason I have never given up my hardware mixer is that I can monitor everything connected to it
in real-time. That said, yes I am familiar with the delay which is caused by slow response of the tone
generator part of a synth. Some are lightning fast (Dave Smith instruments), some are slower (Alesis),
and some are SO slow in responding that I gave up recording them (old Roland synths).

[James Steele]

I use direct hardware play through and I think the latency issue is just when you monitor through an Aux Track. If I create a normal audio track and monitor through that I have no latency.

[Phil O]

I use direct hardware play through and I think the latency issue is just when you monitor through an Aux Track. If I create a normal audio track and monitor through that I have no latency.

I don't know if this is related or not, but I read somewhere that aux track inserts in 9.1 are always run in real time.