Question about latency

L

lauries2

Member
So I did spend about an hour trying to find an answer to this but there was nothing obvious (to me at least).

I want to play through my computer monitor speakers.

For clarity:
- guitar plugged into Axe FX II
- Axe FX II not plugged into anything to monitor the audio
- Axe FX II USB connected to PC with latest drivers
- Axe FX II USB set to 64 samples in "Global"
- Axe FX II selected as an input device on the PC
- ASIO driver latency set to "minimum latency" and 64 samples
- Guitar sound output to monitors connected to PC

The latency is very high - 100ms or more, so it is essentially unplayable.

As I mentioned, I've set the USB latency on the Axe FX II to 64 samples and set the driver to "low latency" and 64 samples... Total latency should therefore be about 128 samples or essentially undetectable.

There is no problem with crackling or the usual stuff you get at low latency. But it seems like the latency didn't actually go down - it still feels like 100ms+

Can't find anything on this in the literature or on the forum? In a previous life I've monitored successfully like this so am wondering if there is something in the Axe setup that I'm missing?
 
monitors should connect to the axe.

this is usually the way to do it with any audio interface.
 
I always go thru a mixer - Axe into the mixer, mixer into the monitors.
No USB, no latency.
If I need to record I go analog or use SPDIF into my sound card.
I personally don't like the Axe as an audio interface. Not a very elegant solution.
 
Are you using Axe Edit at the same time?
I found that if i opened AxeEdit while doing this the Axe buffer size increased.
 
BillyZeppa said:
Are you using Axe Edit at the same time?
I found that if i opened AxeEdit while doing this the Axe buffer size increased.
Click to expand...
Ohhh... interesting. I've tried it with Axe Edit open and closed and it is the same. Something to watch out for in the future though!

Thanks to the other posters for the thoughts about directly monitoring, but that's not what I'm trying to do.
 
If you want low latency and you want digital input to your PC DAW, you may need to do what i did - get an audio interface with S/PDIF I/O that also has a software zero latency 'mixer'. Then you can run the Axe output to your DAW digitally (via S/PDIF), and when you want the option to re-amp later, you can run the direct signal to your DAW digitally (via S/PDIF), while at the same time, run the processed stereo output of the Axe via analog out.
 
Are you absolutely sure you're using the ASIO driver, and not some system WDM driver? Or perhaps you're using the Steinberg ASIO duplex driver and not the Axe FX one?
 
I don't know if this is pertinent or not, but USB ports are interrupt-driven. It's possible if you have a lotta things running on the USB that the ports aren't being polled as fast as they could. USB-connected external HDD, printer, scanner, card reader, mouse, keyboard, Axe Fx, etc. all start to stack up time slices. Plus, some older motherboards will mix USB-1 and USB-2 ports and they have different bit rates.

Just a thought.
 
Cagey said:
I don't know if this is pertinent or not, but USB ports are interrupt-driven. It's possible if you have a lotta things running on the USB that the ports aren't being polled as fast as they could. USB-connected external HDD, printer, scanner, card reader, mouse, keyboard, Axe Fx, etc. all start to stack up time slices. Plus, some older motherboards will mix USB-1 and USB-2 ports and they have different bit rates.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
And a good one... The port I was plugging into was defaulting to USB-1. Am in a USB2 port and things are better. Down to what sounds like 10-20ms now. A little more tweaking and it will be there.
 
Interestingly, when I plugged into the new USB port the system installed a WDM driver. I do appear to be using the FAS ASIO driver but any more info you can help me with would be much appreciated...
 
Your computer monitors are plugged into what?

If it's internal speakers like on a laptop or speakers plugged into the 1/8" output of a desktop, then your latency is "normal". What's happening is your computer is acting as an audio interface and the internal soundcard on computers are crap and have really high latency. This has nothing to do with the axe fx, but separating input on one device and output on another is not helping either.

2 suggestions:
Best one: use the outputs on your axe fx to connect to your monitors.

Second: use asio4all to reduce your computer's latency.
 
Fortunately, small mixers are always handy, and you can get a fairly nice one for pretty reasonable money these days.
 
Hah! Yeah, but now I have HF hash from the computer connection to the mixer. I'll have to get some isolators for either the computer audio or the USB connection (you can run the computer audio in through USB or analogue jacks).
 
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