How Low Can You Go?
1.5 ms of latency approaches the theoretical minimum, because it will always take a
finite amount of time to convert analog to digital at the input, and digital to analog at the
output. Unfortunately, though, ultra-low latency settings (or higher sampling rates, for
that matter) make your computer work harder, so you’ll be limited as to how many plug-
ins can run before your computer audio starts to sputter, crackle, or mute. As latency will
continue to be a part of our musical lives for the foreseeable future, here are some tips
on living with latency.
Set latency to the highest comfortable value. 5.6 ms feels very responsive, and
makes the computer work less hard compared to choosing 2 or 3 ms. If you’re
using a DAW like Ableton Live, a higher latency settings means you can also
have more tracks, use software synthesizers more readily, etc.
Every millisecond of latency is approximately equivalent to moving 1 foot away
from your speaker. So, if you wear headphones with a system that has 5 ms of
latency, you’ll experience the same amount of delay as if your head was 5 feet
away from your monitor speakers.
Periodically go to
http://www.gibson.com/downloads/software
to check for
updated drivers that may improve performance.
If you also use software synthesizers, use your DAW’s “freeze” function (if
available) to disconnect some synths from the CPU. Or, render a soft synth’s
output as a hard disk audio track (then remove the soft synth), which is far less
taxing on your processor.
Hint:
If you retain the MIDI track driving the soft synth,
which places virtually no stress on your CPU, you can always edit the part later
by re-inserting the soft synth. Freezing frees up CPU power for additional
processors like Guitar Rig 3.
