Posts by nightlight

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

    My current firewire card is a no-name Chinese made POS that uses the VIA chipset, which normally would be ok. But I believe there were some manufacturing compromises when they added a single firewire 800 port to it, didn't provide for enough voltage. As a result bandwidth is constricted. This is what I could piece together based on the RME forums, still have to test it in theory. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's not something else altogether.

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

    Quote from Bevosss

    I just remembered Samplitude has an additional audio engine mode for low-latency monitoring, I found this info with a quick google:



    BTW I use a Fireface 800 as well and it's perfect for no latency routing, have a look at that for a solution. I can usually get down to 48-64 if I need to in Reaper, although 128 is my default and I just use TotalMix to monitor inputs with zero latency.


    The more I think about it, the more I'm sure there's some kind of hardware conflict in my computer, most likely my firewire card. I think I'll pick up a new one and see what happens.

  • Coffee Shop/Lounge/Other Things sub-forum

    Think it would be nice to have a dedicated sub-forum for just talking crap. Call it coffee shop, other things, whatever.


    I know that other sites already have these features, but I don't think it would detract from the serious nature of the Kemper forums.


    Rather, it's an incentive to spend more time here and will help members get to know each other better. Prefer these forums to many of the others on the net, so this would be a step toward making it self-contained.

  • Just got my powered head, strange issues with build quality?

    Could be a used unit they pawned off to you in exchange. There is no gap between the green hood and the faceplate of the unit. The chickenhead knob is firm and clicks when turning. Buttons should not have to be pressed harder in comparison to other buttons. I suggest you let Sweetwater know this appears to be a roughly used unit and you need a replacement.

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

    Quote from meambobbo

    The Axe and Kemper are WAAAAY different beasts. The closest A/B test you could do on them is to profile the Axe with the Kemper. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were subtle differences - profiling a digital amp model is VERY different than making a digital copy of something. And really that's all DAW's are doing - they are digitally mixing tracks. The algorithms should be equally (100% transparent). There is no impact on frequency response or other aspects of tone, until you add effect sends.


    If you are inclined, try a double-blind test. Put the exact same audio tracks in both DAWs and export the audio mixdowns .wav files. Label them track 1 and track 2, so if someone else saw them, they wouldn't know which file came from which DAW. Then have a friend/roomate/etc play each file in a random order (ex. 1,1,2,1,2,2,2,1,2) and ask you which DAW you think it came from. Make sure you do this enough times to make the correlation statistically relevant. I think 10-20 attemps is enough. Then look at the recorded results and score how many times you picked the right DAW. I'd be surprised if you score better than 60%.


    Picking which is which might DAW be difficult. "Can you hear any difference," is what I'd be looking for in this case.


    Of course, "better" sound is so subjective, YMMV, IMHO, etc. Holds true for so many pieces of gear, I don't think software is any different.


    As I mentioned when I first said, "Samplitude sounds more transparent", it is so subjective. Due to all the trouble I've been having, I fired up Cubase yesterday and did a little "one shot, one take" recording. And you know what? Sounded pretty damn good to me!


    Have got in touch with Magix Support with regard to my Samplitude problem. Hope there's some kind of solution, otherwise it's money down the drain for all practical purposes.


    What the Kemper has to do with all this? Nothing, really. I suppose linking latency to 44.1 khz master only SPDIF is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, hoohoo. I just wasted $499 :wacko:

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

    Quote from Bevosss

    Statements like this have been tested and disproved on many different audio forums. It's likely the default pan law is the culprit, unless you are using different plugins which isn't a fair comparison. In any case, it's a modern day 'flat earth' analogy...laughable. My audio teacher swore Pro Tools sounded worse than DP, likely a different Pan Law was influencing him as well...... :D


    That's why I added the caveat, imho (in my humble opinion). You could say the same thing about the Kemper and the Axe FX II. Agree? Disagree? :D

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

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    Quote from ckemper


    A double sample rate does not result in a lower latency.
    It results in putting double calculation power into the same musical output.
    You might end up increasing the latency to get a back a bit from the "sactified" calculation power.


    44.1 kHz provides the lowest load for your computer, thus the highest probability that a low latency setting will work for your project.


    I'm no audio expert, but that's what the Sound on Sound article suggested, so I thought I'd post. Perhaps it's not exactly a 1:2 difference, but I'm sure there must be some correlation. With modern computers these days, where you have multiple cores and higher frequency, processing power is no longer as big a limitation as it used to be. For example, I'm able to play modern games at 1920x1080 at the highest graphics settings on my simple i5 with a Radeon 6870 GFX card. Not anywhere close to top of the shelf.


    Of course, I agree that sound quality does not improve with higher sampling rates.


    Quote from lightbox


    Don't get me wrong, I'm just joking but this is the second weirdest statement ever, right after "the earth is a flat disc". :thumbup:
    On a more serious side ... if you prefer the filters for some reason, ok. But the software flat in flat out can't make a difference in sound. ;)


    You'd be surprised at the number of people that say this about Samplitude. All boils down to algorithms, just like the Kemper vs Axe FX II in some ways. Cubase sounds darker, Samplitude a little more open, imho. You should try the free trial and see if you concur. Of course, as I mentioned, this is all subjective, so there can be no end of disagreement, no winners and no losers :D


    Quote from Trazan


    I'm curious though...are you monitoring the Kemper through your DAW when recording? Is there no mixer for your audio interface for direct routing? That way you can use whatever buffer you'd like with no latency.


    The more I read about it online, the more I'm convinced it's a software issue. There are other people talking about the same thing on the RME and Samplitude forums. Of course I monitored with my hardware, it's a really good soundcard. But my issue was more connected with lost audio buffers (LABs) than latency. I could only eliminate LABs by maxing out my buffer at 1024. But this introduced a lot of latency when trying to record drums via midi. TotalMix is very functional, but I think the problem lies more in Windows 8.1 and Samplitude than it does my hardware. Still thinking about upgrading my motherboard though. Might check if there are any loose connections when I get back home today, now that I think about it.


    Quote from viabcroce


    Well, the computer devoted to making real-time music should be optimized for the purpose: killing most of the services, no antivirus, no firewall, no internet, no background tasks, the minimum amount of drivers. I use a dual-boot option for this. Also, mandatory IMO are a motherboard optimization (BIOS), firewire or internal ASIO soundcard with 2 ms latency declared, excellent drivers and direct monitoring option. When this is not possible, Windows for example (I use a PC) allows to create different users with different environments (drivers, services etc): it's not the same, but it helps.


    I shall try this out too. But I already run my PC with minimal apps at startup, etc. And as mentioned, my interface is still top of the line years after it was launched, its really killer. BIOS is updated, device drivers up to date. Windows itself is another story, some of the programming is absolutely retrograde, judging from articles I've read.

  • 44.1khz master only SPDIF, latency and the Kemper

    Quote from KoMa

    correct me if I'm wrong (and this might be the case here) but I always thought the higher the sample rate the more cpu usage. So if that's right a higher sample rate wont save you from dropouts you otherwise get from a lower buffersize.
    And these days most machines can handle a lower buffersize .... if you're not using 20 instances of your plug ins on every channel while tracking ;)


    I recently purchased a crossgrade of Magix Samplitude Pro X for my PC. When I ran the software with my regular settings, I almost immediately ran into audio problems in the form of Lost Audio Buffers (LABs). Had to change a variety of settings to have acceptable recording performance with no LABs. But this also involved raising my audio buffer to 1,048 samples, the maximum possible with my Fireface 800 interface.


    My PC isn't the greatest, but it's not chopped liver either. Some basic specs:
    Inter I5-2500K processor
    Asus P7-H55M motherboard
    8 GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
    Samsung SSD
    Seagate 500 GB hard disk
    Western Digital 320 GB hard disk
    VIA Firewire card
    Windows 8.1


    The weak link seems to be my motherboard, but I don't have cash to upgrade at the moment. I ran some tests with latencymon and found that my computer would function with around 350 DPC latency on average, but every once in a while, it would spike to 500 us DPC. Consequently, I was getting a lot of audio dropouts and had to really put extreme settings to get things in order.


    I don't have this problem with Cubase 6.5, but I migrated to Samplitude because I prefer the "sound" (entirely subjective, but I'd say it has a more open and neutral character), as well as the fact that midi quantization is less of a pain than in Cubase (weird but true, I need it for my choppy drum playing :D).


    Due to the 1024 buffer setting, I'm experiencing about 23 ms latency, which is just too high for comfort. Hence, I was wondering about SPDIF and the Kemper's master preference. I know it's not something that can be changed, but it did pique my interest.