Doing a lot of midi stuff (with Live, Cubase, Sonar, Project5, Acid etc.)
and want to upgrade my card (have a SB Live) to a low or no latency card.
I've heard M-Audio's Audiophile 2496 PCI card is one of the best. I am using
a USB M-Audio Keystation 49e.

Any in the $100 or so price range that are worth considering? Or is the 2496
the best?

Thanks!

Frank

emu 0404

http://www.emu.com

regards


emil


"Frank McMahon" wrote in message
...

Doing a lot of midi stuff (with Live, Cubase, Sonar, Project5, Acid etc.)
and want to upgrade my card (have a SB Live) to a low or no latency card.
I've heard M-Audio's Audiophile 2496 PCI card is one of the best. I am
using
a USB M-Audio Keystation 49e.

Any in the $100 or so price range that are worth considering? Or is the
2496
the best?

Thanks!

Frank

In article writes:

emu 0404

What latency have you measured, and how did you measure it? Or are you
just passing on the "very low latency" ad copy?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

in a price range around 100$
is just few cards with resonable "very low latency"
and one of this is EMU 0404 - did not measure
just play with VST istruments
but if You have some simple way to mesure latency i can test few cards
and poot result here

Best Regards

emil



"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1097690996k@trad...

In article writes:

emu 0404

What latency have you measured, and how did you measure it? Or are you
just passing on the "very low latency" ad copy?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

and one of this is EMU 0404 - did not measure
just play with VST istruments
but if You have some simple way to mesure latency i can test few cards
and poot result here

There are a number of things that are called "latency." The thing that
concerns me most is the time between when audio (like a microphone)
hits the input and when it comes out the monitor output. You can
measure this by putting something with a short rise time (a cross
stick sound is good) into one channel, and connect the output of that
channel to the input of another channel. Record a few seconds on both
channels. Stop the recording, zoom in on the waveform of the two
channels, and measure the time difference between them. That's the
input/output latency.

Latency when playing samples is trickier because it depends on the
program that's supporting the VST instrument. If you have a MIDI
keyboard with sounds you could choose a similar sound on the keyboard
and from the VST library, connect the analog output of the sample
playback channel to one input, connect the synth output to another
input, play your sound, record it to two tracks, and look at the time
difference between the tracks. That's not totally accurate but it will
get you a ballpark measurement.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike, emil or anyone else...not sure what type of latencys there are but
here is what I need: I need a setup that when I hit a note I hear it through
the monitor at the same time, and I also need that sound recorded at the
exact same time in my program.

There are some cards that offer zero latency monitoring, which I guess is
not terribly hard to offer with the correct cabling, but I am most
interested in playing back a midi track with say a drum beat and then laying
down a second drum track where I am playing in real time to the beat of the
tracked played back, and I am hitting the notes on my keyboard exactly on
cue.

Right now I have a sound blaster live and an M-audio Keystation 49e that is
hooked up via a USB (1.0 I believe)

Using programs such as live, sonar, etc I want to make sure that if I am
playing a metrodone in live and I hit a key at the exact time as it clicks,
that when I play it back it is right at that exact time.

Not sure what would help..but the two audio cards discussed seemed to be
highly rated. I am also now wondering if I should get a card with an actual
midi port and use my keyboard midi port, as opposed to the plug and play USB
cable.

Hopefully this explains it better...and any suggestions you would have, for
a card, setup or port, would be great..thanks!

Frank






"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1097708571k@trad...

In article writes:

and one of this is EMU 0404 - did not measure
just play with VST istruments
but if You have some simple way to mesure latency i can test few cards
and poot result here

There are a number of things that are called "latency." The thing that
concerns me most is the time between when audio (like a microphone)
hits the input and when it comes out the monitor output. You can
measure this by putting something with a short rise time (a cross
stick sound is good) into one channel, and connect the output of that
channel to the input of another channel. Record a few seconds on both
channels. Stop the recording, zoom in on the waveform of the two
channels, and measure the time difference between them. That's the
input/output latency.

Latency when playing samples is trickier because it depends on the
program that's supporting the VST instrument. If you have a MIDI
keyboard with sounds you could choose a similar sound on the keyboard
and from the VST library, connect the analog output of the sample
playback channel to one input, connect the synth output to another
input, play your sound, record it to two tracks, and look at the time
difference between the tracks. That's not totally accurate but it will
get you a ballpark measurement.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article writes:

Mike, emil or anyone else...not sure what type of latencys there are but
here is what I need: I need a setup that when I hit a note I hear it through
the monitor at the same time, and I also need that sound recorded at the
exact same time in my program.

You'll never get it exact, but about 5 milliseconds delay is tolerable
for just about any musician.

There are some cards that offer zero latency monitoring, which I guess is
not terribly hard to offer with the correct cabling, but I am most
interested in playing back a midi track with say a drum beat and then laying
down a second drum track where I am playing in real time to the beat of the
tracked played back, and I am hitting the notes on my keyboard exactly on
cue.

The only true zero latency monitoring is with an analog path from the
input sound source (there is none with a virtual synth, but this works
with a microphone) to the monitor output.

I have heard reports of some really horrible (like 500 ms) latencies,
but most are far better than that. I'd suggest that you go to a dealer
or a friend with a setup that's capable of doing the recording
functions you want to do, and just sit down and give it a try.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 14:16:26 GMT, "Frank McMahon"
wrote:


Mike, emil or anyone else...not sure what type of latencys there are but
here is what I need: I need a setup that when I hit a note I hear it through
the monitor at the same time, and I also need that sound recorded at the
exact same time in my program.

There are some cards that offer zero latency monitoring, which I guess is
not terribly hard to offer with the correct cabling, but I am most
interested in playing back a midi track with say a drum beat and then laying
down a second drum track where I am playing in real time to the beat of the
tracked played back, and I am hitting the notes on my keyboard exactly on
cue.

Right now I have a sound blaster live and an M-audio Keystation 49e that is
hooked up via a USB (1.0 I believe)

Using programs such as live, sonar, etc I want to make sure that if I am
playing a metrodone in live and I hit a key at the exact time as it clicks,
that when I play it back it is right at that exact time.

Not sure what would help..but the two audio cards discussed seemed to be
highly rated. I am also now wondering if I should get a card with an actual
midi port and use my keyboard midi port, as opposed to the plug and play USB
cable.

Hopefully this explains it better...and any suggestions you would have, for
a card, setup or port, would be great..thanks!


Mike is not looking at the problem from a musician's viewpoint,
certainly not a musician using the software synths and samplers
included with programs such as Sonar.

If this is what you're doing, I suggest you read the discussion of
latency on my Cubase FAQ page. It is equally applicable to other
similar programs.

Your problem isn't the midi interface.

Your SB live possibly is.


CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect