So music tech...

[Moosedrool]

Tech thread for producers and audio engineers.

I'm back into messing around with music and making heavily outboard processed stuff. I have a somewhat decent 16 channel interface but due to usb latency being shyte and all I'm upgrading to pci express MADI.

I decided to spend a damn large load of funds which was saved for some other toy over the years on a dedicated PC with a proper audio setup.

I'm buying one of these 194 in 196 out rme adapters:

https://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/hdspe_madi_fx.php

I do processing through numerous outboard stuff like stomp pedals, distortion racks, filters and even send midi to and audio back from some external synths.

Anyway synths, mics, instruments and analog goodies. Back to the point.

My question is reducing latency to be as low as possible. What type of cpu's aka XEON, I range or AMD actually handles this the best?

Didn't know if this is a tech question or music creator one but decided here cause it can be a nice thread to talk about and show off gear and such.

 

[Moosedrool]

Meh... Gearslutz might be a better group to ask. Is just I'm kinda nitpicking cause I want to build a silly high end pc for a change. Lol

 

[copacetic]

I would imagine that a reasonably modern CPU, coupled with an efficient DAW and obviously a professional-grade interface will reduce your latency to perfectly workable levels. I don't think you need NASA level hardware to achieve this end.

I certainly was able to achieve latency low enough to be irrelevant with an i5-4690K and a Saffire Pro 24 Firewire card in Reaper.

No longer have the card though, and would dig to get something to record with again. I need to pare down on plugins, etc, speaking of, anyone want to buy my Komplete 10 Ultimate bundle...

 

[Moosedrool]

Ah the firewire range from focusrite. lower latency than usb and people ask me why I wanted firewire back then.

Is the owner of 2 DAWS (Cubase and Ableton) with Ableton running in rewire mode and a weird list plugins including imageline's juiced pack. XD so you can almost say fruity loops as well haha.

My issue is I manage to floor a 2013 macbook pro retina quite easily when it comes to loading up either high end VST plugins and/or outboarding with external effects and such. Stuff like xfer Serum for example oversamples to the point where the filter coefficient sounds near analog but run a bunch of them and the macbook says f you.

I don't just want to go out and buy the craziest stuff i can get my hands on but it's like this idea if I'm buying the rme I want it to preform at its best.

 

[copacetic]

Obviously if you are looking for as close-to-indistinguishable from their analog counterparts, and using multiple instances thereof, certain plugins will of course completely **** up any computer you try them on and in that case, if that's what you need, then the sort of hardware you talk about might become necessary.

I'm not convinced though, that this is the best way to solve the problem. Many plugins have live vs mixdown quality settings, etc. Render to audio once you've tracked, etc (most DAWs surely have some sort of feature where you can render a track to audio fairly seamlessly, and convert back to MIDI / plugin when necessary)?

I don't know much about Macbooks, but from the get-go, I would prefer to produce on an 'open-source' desktop, simply due to the fact that you will be getting more bang for your buck in terms of processing power compared to a Mac.

 

[Moosedrool]

Freeze track. I should use it more though.

Pc is definitly better. The macbook heats up and slows the cpu which is my first issue with the laptop in general.