EWQLSO Latency Problems - Help!!

[robmanning]

Hello world,

I am having latency problems with EWQLSO Gold.

When I play a note I hear it slightly later, making performance a problem, and also when I play back the recorded midi the timing is slightly late, even when quantized.

This problem is worse with certain sounds/instruments. I am aware that the attack time on alot of the instruments will ease the note into full volume, but I don't think that is the cause of my problem. I end up having to move the midi information to an earlier beat.

Does anyone else have these problems? and more to the point, does anyone know how to solve it?

I use a dual 2 GHz G5, Mac OSX 10.3.9, running logic pro 7.0.1, using core audio - MOTU 2408 mk3

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am getting increasingly frustrated and want to get the most out of the library,

Thanks,

[KitC]

Looking at your specs, I automatically saw 2 problems: OSX 10.3.9 (Panther) and Logic Pro 7.0.1.

Full PDC was implemented with Logic Pro 7.1; I don't really know if you need Tiger to run it, but 7.1 was released right after Tiger was so it's entirely probable the two were made for each other. Here's this article from SoS which fully explains Logic's implementation of PDC. Makes you kinda wish you went Cubase instead, eh?  

[abyssinianson]

I was soooooo close to purchasing Logic a few months before they jumped ship from PC and went exclusively to Macin-tard (Mac users: I jib; I actually use a G5 as well but I hate it compared to a PC).

[KitC]

abyss,

Have you seen the new macintel 3 ghz G5? You gotta hand it to Jobs. I particularly like the way they put 2 terabytes of data across 4 HDs in those neat slide out trays. Pretty slick package, eh? I'd be happy enough even just to own a Macmini...

[jplacson]

abyss... this is just for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEAGmBRC1dc

enjoy!  

[GerardSalonga]

Rob,

I have just about the same specs as you.  Dual 2.0 G5, OSX10.3.9, running Logic Pro 7.1, and using MOTU 2408Mk3's attached to the PCI-424.  I'm using EWQLSO platinum installed on PCs, but I have the percussion installed on the mac.  If you're having latency issues, check under the Audio menu, audio hardware and drivers, and make sure you set the latency to 256 or less.  Core audio will reboot.  Also play around with the DFD settings in the Kompakt player (same if you use Kontakt) to get the best balance of performance and RAM conservation.  Also check that your sample storage/audio hard disk is nice and empty and defragmented.   Check out logicprohelp.com.  It's a great resource, and there are user-uploaded environments and stuff.

KitC...thanks for the nice welcome on the other thread!  If I remember right, PDC only applies in playback situations to keep things in sync, delaying unprocessed signals to allow soft synths/insert effects, etc to catch up.  His problem was excessive delay when actually playing a note from his MIDI keyboard.  I'm also on Cubase SX3 (amazing on an Athlon 64X2 I'm testing....really sucks on a Mac.  The Five Towers test is at 20% on stop and 30% at play with the HDSP9652 set at 128 buffer...double the power of a dual G5).  So if you think about it, PDC is not the issue for him....unless the guys at Steiny have come up with precognition software

[KitC]

You're welcome, Gerard.

Yeah, I was thinking about buffer settings... but I never expected to hear about midi latency on a G5. 256 samples should put him in the 4 ms range, right?

AFAIK, Steiny hasn't come up with precognition capabilities on SX3; maybe SX4.    Nice about the EWQLSO you have there... 70 gigs worth, IIRC. No wonder you need those raptors! Next thing you're gonna tell me is that you have Collosus and Garritan, and I'll be green with envy.  

If you think the Athlon X2 is the bomb, wait till you get a Conroe. I'm just waiting for a DAW-approved motherboard to surface. It's hard looking for those rev. 304 mobos.

[marvinq]

actually, kit, he does.

hahaha.

[robmanning]

Dear All,

Thanks for all your advice, I really appreciate it !!

This is my first timeof using the phil music forum, and its reassuring to know that there are so many clued poeple willing to help.

I have ordered more ram (2 X 1GB's), and Tiger OSX, and have tweaked I/O buffer sizes, so hopefully I should see an improvement.!!

Thanks,

[prodigi]

set your i/o buffer size to 256 to reduce latency but don't set it to low to prevent the program from crashing. then it can be set back to 1024 after you're done sequencing. higher buffer settings will allow you to apply more plugins or fx during the mixing process. and also try to monitor your cpu/system performance. hth!  

[GerardSalonga]

I agree with prodigi....I personally always have the cpu performance (vst performance in Cubase) open, especially when I get trigger happy instantiating Atmosphere, Stormdrum, and Sculpture.

Kit...don't be mad....but yeah I have GOS (love it). Haven't gotten into GPO too much though. Gotta love em samples man.  My template is a weird mix....stuff from all over.  Can't find it all in one package, and you can never have enough sounds!

[KitC]

You da man, Gerard! And why should I be mad? I'm just green with envy and it has fueled my GAS again!

marvinq, I already half-expected Gerard would have those collections and more. It's scary how they eat hard disks for breakfast, though.

I know Logic has a freeze function. It should help if you're running the limits of processor power. But if you're already in mixdown stage, you should really bump up your latency to higher values so that it takes less cpu and you could insert more plugins as needed. Unfortunately, since they pulled the rug on Logic for windows, I've been wondering how different Logic's freeze is as compared to Cubase and even Sonar's.

[GerardSalonga]

Kit,

In Logic, freezing a soft synth track temporarily bounces it as an audio track, so the resulting CPU hit and disk load becomes similar to that of playing back an uneffected stereo audio track.  You still have control of volume and pan, but nothing to do with the synth.  On a recent project I made good use of freezing, as I had 8 instances of Atmosphere running, as well as 6 instances of Sculpture, to go along with the 2 fully loaded instances of Kontakt and 8 full channels of Morphology.  The CoreAudio overloads started happening, but I was still in the composition stage, so I couldn't jack up the buffer size.  I froze all the finished synth tracks and it freed things up quite a bit.  

I'm not sure if this needs a separate thread....but do you or anyone else have experience working in 5.1 at the sequencer level?  I've done mixes in ProTools in 5.1, but from the tests I've done so far, it's looking like Digital Performer handles surround in the most elegant, audio-centric way.  I'm not able to find 6 channel metering in Logic (DP and Cubase/Nuendo have it) other than creating 6 mono output objects in the environment.  DP is the only one outside of pro tools that allows me to create a 5.1 audio track that uses a surround aux bus as the input (to do re-recording to a stem instead of conventional bouncing).  I would love for any Cubase/Nuendo guys to prove me wrong, as I'm really liking the idea of Cubase on an Athlon64x2 or Dual Xeon workstation...just like Hans Zimmer

[KitC]

I'm not sure if this needs a separate thread....but do you or anyone else have experience working in 5.1 at the sequencer level?  I've done mixes in ProTools in 5.1, but from the tests I've done so far, it's looking like Digital Performer handles surround in the most elegant, audio-centric way.  I'm not able to find 6 channel metering in Logic (DP and Cubase/Nuendo have it) other than creating 6 mono output objects in the environment.  DP is the only one outside of pro tools that allows me to create a 5.1 audio track that uses a surround aux bus as the input (to do re-recording to a stem instead of conventional bouncing).  I would love for any Cubase/Nuendo guys to prove me wrong, as I'm really liking the idea of Cubase on an Athlon64x2 or Dual Xeon workstation...just like Hans Zimmer

Yeah, I do believe this will require a separate thread.

Unfortunately, since I'm pc-centric, my ventures into 5.1 involve Sonar 4 PE (I will be upgrading to Sonar 5 soon and hopefully be getting a free upgrade to Sonar 6). The biggest hurdle to 5.1 mixing, IMO, are 5.1 plugins. I'm lucky enough to have Pantheon Surround and the Sonitus suite to play around with it.