schmidi_0
Just curious about the community's experiences with ASIO latency/performance with various CONTROLLER manufacturers.
I ask because the main reviews sites never cover this important aspect. I know for myself, anything above 10ms latency starts to feel sloppy. Above 30ms and i might as well just use an Android DJ app.
When it comes to manufactures, i only have experience with numark. While i truly like a lot of their physical designs they often use 3rd party ASIO drivers, or worse, asio4all.
My only other controller experience is my Stanton SCS4.DJ. In stand alone mode, there is almost zero latency. The feel is amazing in comparison and lead me to seek the community's experience with other controllers.
So, if good drivers are 10ms or less and mediocre are 20ms or more, which manufacturers make consistently good drivers in your experience?
I ask because the main reviews sites never cover this important aspect. I know for myself, anything above 10ms latency starts to feel sloppy. Above 30ms and i might as well just use an Android DJ app.
When it comes to manufactures, i only have experience with numark. While i truly like a lot of their physical designs they often use 3rd party ASIO drivers, or worse, asio4all.
My only other controller experience is my Stanton SCS4.DJ. In stand alone mode, there is almost zero latency. The feel is amazing in comparison and lead me to seek the community's experience with other controllers.
So, if good drivers are 10ms or less and mediocre are 20ms or more, which manufacturers make consistently good drivers in your experience?
Posted Tue 21 Jun 16 @ 2:04 pm
wickedmix
i have a feeling it is the computer the device is connected to and its USB sub system that is more responsible for a device's ability to reach low latency than the device and its drivers. don't get me wrong i am sure drivers can play a role in this but the USB of the system is what makes or breaks latency usually IMO.
Posted Tue 21 Jun 16 @ 9:30 pm
PhantomDeejay
wickedmix wrote :
i have a feeling it is the computer the device is connected to and its USB sub system that is more responsible for a device's ability to reach low latency than the device and its drivers. don't get me wrong i am sure drivers can play a role in this but the USB of the system is what makes or breaks latency usually IMO.
Actually, no...
Same computer, same USB port, same USB cable, same software, different devices and the results on latency differ way more than you would expect!
As for ASIO drivers:
Pioneer makes ASIO drivers that can achieve very low latency. However because of that they are somewhat unstable (from an internal drivers scope) but they auto-resume and therefore you will never understand that.
Numark does not supply ASIO drivers anymore for most of it's models. For the ones it does, it usually does not update them when a new version of Windows arrives if the unit is older than 1 years old.
Denon has a somewhat bad reputation when it comes to ASIO drivers.
Hercules has nice ASIO drivers that can achieve low latency and be stable, but for older models they don't officially support USB 3.0
Generally speaking, if you don't use timecodes or do heavy scratching it's better to use WASAPI these days.
WASAPI is the Windows equivalent of MAC OS Core Audio and it can also achieve low latency (for most devices down to 4ms or even lower)
Finally keep in mind that for some devices using their ASIO drivers is necessary since their sound interface does not expose on WASAPI all their inputs/outputs.
Posted Tue 21 Jun 16 @ 9:45 pm
schmidi_0
@WickedMix, I understand your assumption and to a certain point the PC does contribute (IE a typical USB ASIO has no chance VS a PCIe ASIO card in most cases). That said, if you ever have the chance to use an RME audio interface in a DAW production environment, you will be shocked at how low the round trip latency is when compared to many of our DJ controller options.
@PhantomDJ, Thank you! Good break down there. Isn't it sad that most of the companies that make the controllers we have to chose from, don't push the performance envelope a bit? Whether most DJs know it or not, they could really benefit from lower latency drivers as much or more so than a DAW producer does!
I've noticed that about the WASAPI drivers over the last couple of years. MUCH improved over what they used to be!
On the bright side, VDJ allows one to bring a separate audio interface and just use the controller...as a controller. Still, the convenience of an all in one solution is nice in a mobile DJ environment.
BTW does VDJ show a round trip latency in it's config window? If not, it might be a nice thing to add and could also help the community push manufacturers to improve their driver performance.
@PhantomDJ, Thank you! Good break down there. Isn't it sad that most of the companies that make the controllers we have to chose from, don't push the performance envelope a bit? Whether most DJs know it or not, they could really benefit from lower latency drivers as much or more so than a DAW producer does!
I've noticed that about the WASAPI drivers over the last couple of years. MUCH improved over what they used to be!
On the bright side, VDJ allows one to bring a separate audio interface and just use the controller...as a controller. Still, the convenience of an all in one solution is nice in a mobile DJ environment.
BTW does VDJ show a round trip latency in it's config window? If not, it might be a nice thing to add and could also help the community push manufacturers to improve their driver performance.
Posted Wed 22 Jun 16 @ 12:48 pm
PhantomDeejay
No, VirtualDj does not show roundtrip latency. And to be honest it's not needed on most cases for DJ-ing purposes.
Roundtrip latency has a significant impact only when you use DVS. For any other case of a "typical" controller you don't have the "in->process->out" scenario as in DAWS.
Also keep in mind that your brain cannot understand the difference in latency if it's lower than 10ms.
So, assuming that the typical USB bus clock uses 6 ms latency for transfer, you can achieve optimal results with 4ms latency on your sound interface. Anything lower than that is still preferable, but your brain won't be able to tell the difference.
For DVS, 4ms latency (on sound interface) means 6+4+4+6= 20ms rountrip latency which is still unnoticeable by most people.
Only on DVS cases you want to go as low as 1ms so that rountrip latency becomes 6+1+1+6 = 14ms which is very close to "perfection" as your brain won't be able to tell the difference for 99% of the time.
PS: Several modern ASIO drivers allows you to adjust the USB bus clock (USB kernels) so that you can try to lower the roundtrip latency even more.
However it's up to each system if they can handle lower bus or not.
Roundtrip latency has a significant impact only when you use DVS. For any other case of a "typical" controller you don't have the "in->process->out" scenario as in DAWS.
Also keep in mind that your brain cannot understand the difference in latency if it's lower than 10ms.
So, assuming that the typical USB bus clock uses 6 ms latency for transfer, you can achieve optimal results with 4ms latency on your sound interface. Anything lower than that is still preferable, but your brain won't be able to tell the difference.
For DVS, 4ms latency (on sound interface) means 6+4+4+6= 20ms rountrip latency which is still unnoticeable by most people.
Only on DVS cases you want to go as low as 1ms so that rountrip latency becomes 6+1+1+6 = 14ms which is very close to "perfection" as your brain won't be able to tell the difference for 99% of the time.
PS: Several modern ASIO drivers allows you to adjust the USB bus clock (USB kernels) so that you can try to lower the roundtrip latency even more.
However it's up to each system if they can handle lower bus or not.
Posted Wed 22 Jun 16 @ 1:20 pm