ASIO Latency

[AlanH]

I had tried various Focusrite USB units and the drivers were crap.

It's reassuring to know that my Focusrite experience is not unique.

I couldn't even make a glitch-free recording on several different notebooks I tried.

I normally use the Scarlett on my transcription rig, where real-time monitoring is not relevant. By setting it to a massively conservative 1024x6, I can make completely glitch-free recordings on my ancient Celeron/XP notebook. But below the 256-sample region, it certainly starts to get flaky.

It seems a shame for a company that prides itself on the analogue quality of its products to be let down by its driver implementation. Oh well, that's life, I guess - you can't win 'em all!

Cheers,

[Grekim]

This is my procedure:

1. Set up the DAW (doesn't have to be SAWStudio) to record a stereo track.
2. Connect a mic to the L channel of the interface under test.
3. Select 'tape-style' monitoring on the DAW.
4. Connect the interface L channel line out (carrying the microphone's monitoring signal) to the R channel line input of the interface.
5. Record a few impulsive sounds - tap a metal object etc.
6. Look at the captured file and measure the time delay between the L and R recorded impulses. All other things being equal, this is the monitoring latency.

It took me some while to realise that latency does not affect time alignment between tracks when overdubbing, because the interface reports its (perceived) latency to the DAW software, which offsets the sound in the captured file accordingly. But this does not help for 'live' input monitoring. And because the test described above captures signals on a single stereo file, the two channels are locked together in time.

Cheers,

Thanks. That looks to be essentially the way I did too a few years ago.