latency with ableton live 5, edirol fa-101, rack mount pc.

[Kim Galibert <kim@pipeline.com>]

>>>On Jan 12, 2006, at 5:12 PM, mech wrote:
>>>>I'm using Ableton Live 5.x with an Edirol FA-101 firewire 
>>>>interface, and running at about 4-5ms latency.
>>>
>>>fascinating. how did you check the latency? i must say that it's 
>>>hard for me to believe that you're getting that low latency with 
>>>firewire.


i have a similar experience to report.  live 5.03, edirol fa-101, and my 
home-built
rack mount system (p4 2.4ghz, 2gb speedy ram, sata 7200 raid array, win xp 
pro).
ableton reports 7ms latency.  i run everything through it, and don't use 
the direct
signal at all.

my only complaint is that sometimes christina (the vocalist) gets a bit of 
a doubling
in her headphones, which can be distracting.  

i've had it down to 3ms by reducing the sample size to the smallest 
setting, but
i got some pops and clicks, so i bumped it up a bit.   

from what i read on the ableton forum, pc's are speedier than macs.

i've had disappointing results running ableton on mac laptops, especially 
in terms
of the ability to run even just a few effects.   

when i'm live looping solo i have absolutely no issues with the latency, 
playing
along with loops requires either just the slightest bit of subconcious 
adjustment,
or none at all.

i don't run any external effects - i'm quite happy with live's built in 
efx plus
a small variety of vst's.

kim@hotbitcharsenal.com