Lowest latency sound card?

[charlie-j]

Hey!

I'm looking for a sound card with as low latency as possible.

Could you reccomend me one without going over £70?

Thank you,

Charlie.

 

[SwaleSmith]

low latency???? why??? how can you tell???

 

[VonBlade]

low latency???? why??? how can you tell???

I have to confess I'm intrigued. Didn't even realise soundcards had latency measurements.

VB

 

[charlie-j]

I need a card that has drivers that have buffer latency that are really low for DAW use, for example 5ms or less.

 

[VonBlade]

If you need it for DAW then surely you need to get some pro hardware?

Even this thing doesn't mention latency though.

Still confused so I'll bow out and leave it to an expert.

 

[charlie-j]

I'm no expert, so it's probably me who's got it wrong. I just saw a video on YouTube saying use the lowest Buffer Latency possible on the ASIO driver settings - I can see why, becuase the MIDI-USB interface I have has about a 2 second delay. I am getting a new interface with higher latency but I still thought it had something to do with the soundcard, becuase of the video.

I might be wrong.

 

[VonBlade]

Ahhh. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

There is a reason most semi-pro setups are firewire. So if you're serious I'd go with the Alesis I linked to. Only a ton more than a X-FI, but infinitely superior for audio work.

 

[FarFarAway]

Info here

Sounds like lowering the lowering the buffer sample size will reduce latency

 

[Luigi]

Ive never heard of low latency sound cards either..

I certianly havent noticed mine having a latency... when I fire, I generally hear a gunshot :S

 

[VonBlade]

Sounds like lowering the lowering the buffer sample size will reduce latency

Although they also say

"Just because you have a P3 833 or faster doesn't mean your video card or other high CPU intensive cards aren't slowing the system down."

So it depends how old that article is. I can't imagine modern cards aren't better than the AWE64s or similar of the P3 era.

 

[charlie-j]

I did look at firewire interfaces but they are amazingly expensive, expecially for my use.

USB is what I will be using for the keyboard controller... but I still saw buffer latency as an option on the Creative ASIO drivers for X-Fi.

I really need to learn more about this

 

[SwaleSmith]

Ive never heard of low latency sound cards either..

I certianly havent noticed mine having a latency... when I fire, I generally hear a gunshot :S

LOL exactly what I thought

 

[charlie-j]

But when I'm using a DAW program - the synths can take some time, and so can the time of the keyboard to output through the sound card?

I really don't know but I saw it in the video.

 

[Marcus]

You can pick up an E-Mu 1212m off ebay for -£100 and it's an awesome card.

Saw one go for about £80 last week I think.

I use it for running Nuendo along with a string of VST's like Atmosphere / Dimension Pro / Nexus etc. via a MIDI keyboard with about 3-4mm seconds latency, not enough to notice as you're playing it in.

Has some really good on board FX as well so you don't need to hammer it with VST FX either if your computer isn't all that great.

I paid £200+ for that card a couple of years ago and it's still going strong, awesome piece of kit if you don't need a million inputs for live recording drums etc.

EDIT: My old setup if anyone is interested.

 

[charlie-j]

Wow thanks, that looks great! I've ordered a MIDI keyboard and saw the E-Mu 1212m and decided against it becuase it was so expensive, but now I've seen those prices it looks promising

I just have a question: how will I be able to use my 7.1 surround sound speakers?