Macs, interfaces, and latency

[RABid]

My point is the Mac's internal sound may well suffice for some people, especially if they use Mac-specific software.

Fixed! Agreed, it's pretty well-established at this point that internal sound cards may well suffice for some people - Mac/PC, (as long as you are using a Mac) shouldn't matter either way (no judgement here whatsoever - you make good music with your setup, then more power to you).

 

Fixed! It is pretty well established at this point that all Mac's use core audio and major DAW software will use that. Latency may not be as good but all Mac software will at least run using the internal sound card on MacBooks. With Windows notebooks you never know what you are getting and almost never get a soundcard with ASIO. While Reason will run on most anything, you are not going to get Sonar or Cubase to even recognize the soundcard as usuable. ASIO4All will help in some cases but on newer HP's it has not been working for me. Manufacturers of windows notbooks don't care if Sonar will not run with a decent ASIO driver.

[Ashville.Guru]

Wouldn't it be nice if everything could be measured?

 

Umm, no actually! I'm thankful for stuff in the world that can't be measured.

 

(OT - Currently attempting to convert an Ipad into a multi-app processing environment using audiobus ... )

Now this put a wide grin on my face...!

 

- Guru

 

[zephonic]

Zeph - first off, tone and intent often translate poorly in text. If you and I were discussing this over a cup of excellent coffee, I could say the same words, and you'd read no judgement or dismissive intent! The 'empty discussion' part was not specifically aimed at you, but the general discussions we've had on interfaces and latency. Yes, I do have an agenda - which is simply to goad the community in the direction of more measurements, which is good for everyone in the long run.

 

OK, no worries.

 

 

You're right - I currently don't use a Mac (I have in the past), but that's only because I've never seen any convincing numbers (performance benchmarks) in favour so far. I'm quite open, and perhaps during the course of discussion you could change my mind!

 

I don't want to change your mind, if anything I'd sooner see myself switching back to Windows. Especially as Apple seems to continue down the iPath, leaving the pro market behind. But that's another story.

 

As for the DAWbench, I did the DSP test on my iMac three or four years ago, but didn't get it to work quite right. I wanted to do the VI test when I got my MacPro last year, but I have Kontakt 5 and DAWbench only works with Kontakt 4. I offered to help with porting it to K5, but Vin never responded to that. I have other things to say about that, but that is off-topic so I'll save it for another time.

 

I've also specified a DawBench rating of 7 or above for beating builtins on OSX - which exactly corresponds to your >$600 threshold. But here's a request - let's not get into the $$ aspect, especially in a Mac/PC discussion!

 

This was not a Mac/PC discussion, and it was certainly not my intention to turn it into one. I just wanted to address the misconception that Macs' built-in audio performance is somehow similar to that of Windows machines.

 

 

And I do look forward to discussing this over a cup of excellent coffee. Which can only be filter coffee, grown in the hills of South India. Now that's not prejudice, it's fact, and you do not want to dispute it with me!

 

I see your South Indian Hills, and raise you a cup of Kenya's finest!

 

 

[AnotherScott]

My point is the Mac's internal sound may well suffice for some people, especially if they use Mac-specific software.

Fixed! Agreed, it's pretty well-established at this point that internal sound cards may well suffice for some people - Mac/PC, shouldn't matter either way

I think the reason it matters (and the point zeph was trying to make) is that, while sure, plenty of sound cards can suffice for many people, the Apple hardware is better than most when used in conjunction with Mac software which uses their CoreAudio infrastructure. The same Apple hardware, when used to run non-Mac software (i.e. Windows VSTs via Bootcamp) will not perform as well. I understand your "correction" but I think that, in the interest of basically saying "there are exceptions to every rule, and everything can work fine for some people," you're obscuring the genuinely useful info zeph was passing along there.

 

When I gave the iMac to my son, I did a full system restore, upgraded to Lion and did no bother to reinstall WinXP. Now it turns out I can't bootcamp anymore, because Lion won't support XP and my iMac won't run Win7.

It's one of the aggravating things about Macs... upgrades can prevent older stuff from working, and there's no easy way to revert. I suspect taht if you had XP running and upgraded to Lion without wiping it out, XP would still be running on that system... but it's just not letting you re-install XP in that environment, right? I wonder, if you had an old backup of the bootcamp partition with XP, if you could possibly restore that and still have it working, even under Lion.

[Ashville.Guru]

I think the reason it matters (and the point zeph was trying to make) is that, while sure, plenty of sound cards can suffice for many people, the Apple hardware is better than most when used in conjunction with Mac software which uses their CoreAudio infrastructure.

... I understand your "correction" but I think that, in the interest of basically saying "there are exceptions to every rule, and everything can work fine for some people," you're obscuring the genuinely useful info zeph was passing along there.

Clarification - until Busch posted those numbers a few days back, there was really no objective evidence anywhere on the net (that I know of) that supported Zeph's claim. As I admitted, I completely missed the 'builtin' part of those numbers, until Zeph drew attention to them. My 'fix' was before that. Following Zeph's post, I immediately acknowledged that he made a strong case.

 

So I missed the part where I 'obscured "genuine" info'.

 

Moreover, I've also pointed why those numbers aren't quite reliable, and suggested a more credible and objective way of settling the issue. Zeph has anyway kindly offered to do the measurements at his convenience.

 

Again, I feel I'm missing something here. Please do explain to me, how merely asking for credible, objective measurements is tantamount to "obscuring 'genuine' info".

 

Or is it some communication issue on my part? I assure you, I'm genuinely open to the possibility of CoreAudio or whatever being inherently superior, LLP-wise. I just need to see some credible numbers to be convinced.

[steadyb]

All this back and forth about latency...

 

...you probably could have actually finished a song by now.

[AnotherScott]

Please do explain to me, how merely asking for credible, objective measurements is tantamount to "obscuring 'genuine' info".

No, the part that I thought obscured "genuinely useful" info was that, by adding your strike-thrus, I felt you had essentially negated two of his points: that Mac apps (because of CoreAudio) seem to have above average performance on their native sound circuitry; and also that that advantage largely disappears if you run Windows (Bootcamp) on the same Mac sound circuitry, so it is the Mac OS software making the difference, more than superior sound hardware (the latter probably varying more depending on which windows system you happen to be comparing it to). But you've already explained that you put in those strike-thrus before realizing what had been previously typed, so it seems you agree that those strike-thrus may have been problematic. So then I don't know why you are surprised that I saw them as problematic. Though I agree with you that this is anecdotal regardless, and it would be interesting to see hard numbers.

[richwhite9]

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=32856

 

Loaded subject. Optimizing boot camp for Windows audio so that it hangs in there with a standard Windows install. Check the above link or do a search. Yeech.

[Ashville.Guru]

But you've already explained that you put in those strike-thrus before realizing what had been previously typed, so it seems you agree that those strike-thrus may have been problematic. So then I don't know why you are surprised that I saw them as problematic.

Yes, my strike-thrus were "problematic", but I had already posted a retraction of my entire take a few posts below it:

 

I hadn't paid enough attention to BurningBusch's numbers until now, and yes, they do point towards what you're saying... But I will say that you've made the strongest case I've seen for OSX so far...!

RABid might be excused for missing/not comprehending my retraction (and that we're talking about about laptops live, not studio DAWs), but its your thread, and the OP is expected to read responses more carefully. I'm surprised (to put it mildly) because my retraction was right there for you to read. Looks like you missed it. Personally, I'd be quite embarrassed if it was pointed out that I was quick to accuse someone of "obscuring" anything without listening to them carefully. But no hard feelings, let's move on.

 

Let's get this out there - I've actually played live with Macbook for a couple of months, few years ago. I think it was a 2007 dual-core, though I'm not sure. One of my first experiments with computers on stage, and I had a complete blast with it. No external interface, builtin headphone outs...

 

No, I wasn't bothered by latency. Not one bit.

 

What I don't see is how this trivial anecdote is worth sharing. For anyone out there who wants to know if their Mac is good enough for gigging live - please hook up your controller, fire up your softsynths, and you'll know for sure in a few minutes. You could even go a step further, like AnotherScott did, and listen simultaneously with onboard sounds from your controller board. No 'echo'...? You're good to go. Take it on stage, make music, have fun, entertain your audience. What's there to discuss on the internet, unless you're hankering for peer validation?

 

It's when you're passionate (read:obsessive!) about building the best, no-compromise rig, that understanding and interpreting numbers, measurements and benchmarks come into play. I'm not currently gigging (will resume soon), and I'm very keen on getting to the bottom of this. It's certainly not necessary for everyone using a laptop live, and full respect for anyone who'd rather focus on making music than get into the nitty-gritties of the tech. It may not be apparent what the fuss is all about, but that's ok - move on folks, nothing to see here.

 

@AnotherScott - here's where I'm coming from. I understand that CoreAudio developers have access to native hardware, so they can tweak/optimize code. However, the only credible study found that OSX underperformed w.r.t. Win 7 on external, non-native hardware. By no means is this the final truth, of course - no tests have been done on native hardware. But coming from an engineer's perspective, I'm skeptical about just how much difference tweaking/optimizing on native hardware can make. I expect the gap between Win 7 and OSX to be narrowed down, at the very least. But if the DawBench result is completely overturned on native hardware, that would indeed be an impressive feat of engineering. And yes, I've been impressed by Apple's engineers in the past, but still, would like to actually see the numbers. But the real surprise would be if they've optimized headphone outs for low latency, at the expense of performance on more professional interfaces - LLP isn't exactly a consumer-level issue.

 

Either they've pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or the DawBench results are flawed. The only way to settle that is, again, to get the numbers!

 

- Guru

 

P.S. I'm now fully guilty of 'empty discussion' myself...

[AnotherScott]

But you've already explained that you put in those strike-thrus before realizing what had been previously typed, so it seems you agree that those strike-thrus may have been problematic. So then I don't know why you are surprised that I saw them as problematic.

Yes, my strike-thrus were "problematic", but I had already posted a retraction of my entire take a few posts below it:

 

I hadn't paid enough attention to BurningBusch's numbers until now, and yes, they do point towards what you're saying... But I will say that you've made the strongest case I've seen for OSX so far...!

RABid might be excused for missing/not comprehending my retraction...but its your thread, and the OP is expected to read responses more carefully.

I'll have to re-read my membership agreement.

 

But I did read your post. What you actually said was "I hadn't paid enough attention to BurningBusch's numbers until now, and yes, they do point towards what you're saying - but there's a caveat. " (bolding the part you omitted in your re-quote)

 

First of all "point towards what you're saying" is vague... I mentioned two ways your strike-thrus changed his meaning, was he changing your mind about one, the other, or both, or even some other aspect of his multi-faceted posts? It was not entirely clear to me. Also, a mild "point towards what you're saying" followed by "but there's a caveat" comes across to me as more of a minor qualification than a "retraction." It reads to me like you thought the strike-thrus were still reasonably appropriate, not that you'd wished you hadn't put them there.

 

As for reading carefully, I have no idea how you got from my comment (that I felt that those strike-thrus obscured useful information) to a completely different thought you ascribed to me (that I felt that your desire for objective measurement obscured genuine information).

 

@AnotherScott - here's where I'm coming from. I understand that CoreAudio developers have access to native hardware, so they can tweak/optimize code.

That's not my understanding, I don't think the developer needs to code anything specially for Apple's native hardware to take advantage of whatever performance it is capable of. In fact, I think pretty much the whole point of CoreAudio is that the developer does not need to do this! Instead, as I understand it, someone who makes a VST host on a Mac is not really a "CoreAudio developer" specifically tweaking/optimizing CoreAudio code for native hardware, but rather, in his code, he would be using standard higher level audio calls which are then passed along to the low level Apple supplied CoreAudio infrastructure which is already optimized for the hardware that Apple builds in. (And Windows apps running on Mac hardware do not employ Apple's code libraries, and so that audio code is not likewise pre-optimized for Apple hardware, and that would mean that a Mac audio app should run better on Mac hardware than a Windows app would.)

 

As an aside: there have been a number of "hackintosh" attempts to run Mac software on non-Apple hardware, and sometimes the thing that doesn't work is audio. Apple's OS apparently expects to see specific audio hardware that it has been designed for, and when it's not there, it can be difficult or impossible to get the sound functions to work. Windows, of course, is not designed in such a way as to be tied so tightly to specific hardware, which can be an advantage, or in cases like this, sometimes possibly a disadvantage.

 

However, the only credible study found that OSX underperformed w.r.t. Win 7 on external, non-native hardware. By no means is this the final truth, of course - no tests have been done on native hardware.

And native hardware is what is at the heart of this entire discussion. Getting back to the first post, this was not supposed to be about Mac vs Win, it's about Mac native vs. Mac external. And much of the conversation in this thread has either not been relevant to that, or if it has been, it has been speculative... though there has also been some interesting anecdotal information, and while it's not what you're looking for, I actually do find it helpful. (As I said in my opening post, I posted for two reasons: one, to pass along my own experience, and two, to try to understand for the future, IF I start making more demands on the system such that I have to increase the buffer and therefore start to experience latency, how I might address that. Measurements are great, but I'll take anecdotal experiences as well.)

 

the real surprise would be if they've optimized headphone outs for low latency, at the expense of performance on more professional interfaces .

I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your italicized (and therefore, presumably important) point of it being at the expense of performance on external interfaces. Unless I missed something, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Apple has done something to worsen performance on external interfaces, so I don't see where the code they optimized for their own hardware is at the expense of anything else. I would think that the performance on external interfaces would be the same regardless of the presence of any routines Apple has employed to optimize the performance of their built in audio.

 

LLP isn't exactly a consumer-level issue.

Maybe they recognize musicians as a significant market and wanted to optimize their native hardware for music applications. (As pointed out in the old thread, my understanding is that Eddie Jobson uses the native outputs, albeit run through a box to convert them to balanced outs because he's running long distances.) Alternatively, maybe whatever other features they were looking to implement in CoreAudio to ensure high quality, consistent audio performance just happened to include low latency. That is, it might not have been a specific goal, but when the rest is done right, you happen to get it anyway.

 

This might be useful, from wikipedia:

 

Apple's Core Audio documentation states that "in creating this new architecture on Mac OS X, Apples objective in the audio space has been twofold. The primary goal is to deliver a high-quality, superior audio experience for Macintosh users. The second objective reflects a shift in emphasis from developers having to establish their own audio and MIDI protocols in their applications to Apple moving ahead to assume responsibility for these services on the Macintosh platform."

[Ashville.Guru]

One things for sure, Scott - no one can accuse either of us of skimping when it comes to word counts... :grin:

 

Looks like it's a communication thing, we're kinda talking 'at' each other. I'm familiar with the CoreAudio gobbledygook. And I'm simply agnostic - maybe it's all they claim it is, maybe it's not. The issue is simply too complex for me to judge either ways.

 

Thankfully, everything about latency can be measured. There are just two variables, and there's no ambiguity in interpretation (unlike other areas of electronics that Jerry refers to). And hence my insistence on numbers.

 

- Guru

[Tusker]

My two-month-old 11 inch entry-level MacBook air ($999 model) runs the new Pianoteq acoustic, wurli, rhodes and clavs, as well as broken wurli VST's flawlessly. I am using the headphone out jack and no audio interface (although I have one if needed) and can detect no sound quality deterioration or noticeable latency (not saying it is 0, just that I don't notice it).

 

Thanks for sharing this.

 

I am in the market for a new MBP or Air due to an "orange juice incident" which triggered the liquid sensors in my MBP and have left me with a big repair bill or the opportunity to update.

 

PianoTeq is famously efficient, but especially if you are pedalling, you are using quite a bit of polyphony aren't you. What host are you using if any, and have you tried anything multi-timbral yet? Thanks in advance ...

[Dglavko]

My two-month-old 11 inch entry-level MacBook air ($999 model) runs the new Pianoteq acoustic, wurli, rhodes and clavs, as well as broken wurli VST's flawlessly. I am using the headphone out jack and no audio interface (although I have one if needed) and can detect no sound quality deterioration or noticeable latency (not saying it is 0, just that I don't notice it).

 

Thanks for sharing this.

 

I am in the market for a new MBP or Air due to an "orange juice incident" which triggered the liquid sensors in my MBP and have left me with a big repair bill or the opportunity to update.

 

PianoTeq is famously efficient, but especially if you are pedalling, you are using quite a bit of polyphony aren't you. What host are you using if any, and have you tried anything multi-timbral yet? Thanks in advance ...

Happy to help.

 

I am using both VSTs as standalone as I prefer to keep it simple although I did give broken wurli a spin through mainstage host too. I haven't tried anything multitimbral as the mojo covers my "other sound" needs. But I'll do that and report further.

[Ashville.Guru]

I am in the market for a new MBP or Air due to an "orange juice incident" which triggered the liquid sensors in my MBP and have left me with a big repair bill or the opportunity to update.

 

I can relate. OT, but allow me to share my sob story - which is bizarrely relevant to a different bone of contention between me and Scott...

 

This happened 3 weeks ago. Thanks to a freak accident at work, my Dell Latitude came crashing down to the ground. At >6 lbs, it's not exactly lightweight; the lid was open and powered up. Fell from more than 4 feet, and the very loud crash bought peeps running to see what happened.

 

Dig this: the very first thing that pops into my head, even before I investigate the damage, is this post by AnotherScott (I need to spend less time on this forum ).

 

So anyways, I open the lid, and... the screen is intact. Not a scratch anywhere. Everything's working perfect...!

 

... or so I thought. Like a victim of the 5-point-palm-exploding-heart technique, the OS lurched around for a while, and then just keeled over and died.

 

It was the 7200 RPM hard drive.

 

But thanks to Ubuntu's excellent backup scheduler, I lost only two day's worth of data. Still, was a major pain installing a new drive, two OSes, all the software I need, and restoring the system to previous state. Took the better part of two weeks (I'm typing from the same machine now).

 

But hey, at least I get to gloat: Scott, you're wrong, the display is NOT the most fragile part of a laptop...

 

Sorry for the derail, but I was waiting for an excuse to say that! :grin:

 

P.S. Jerry - FWIW, years ago, I've used Pianoteq on an ancient Celeron machine - running two instances simultaneously, in fact. Headphone outs, no interface .

[JeffLearman]

BTW, are you happy with the audio performance of the built-ins? While I'm a fan of using built-ins and a lot of them are adequate, I don't expect them to be stellar.

 

A good way to scope the audio performance is Rightmark Audio Analyzer. Years ago (say, 2004) when I collected data from anyone who'd run benchmarks, Macs weren't even as good as a number of Windows laptops. They may be better now. But there weren't awful (and some Windows MOBOs were truly awful).

[AnotherScott]

But hey, at least I get to gloat: Scott, you're wrong, the display is NOT the most fragile part of a laptop...

 

Sorry for the derail, but I was waiting for an excuse to say that! :grin:

I will repeat and amend/clarify in bold:

 

"I think the screen would have a good likelihood of being the most easily damaged piece, particularly in a laptop with an SSD." (My immediately preceding post had said, "This is also why, besides speed, I'd prefer an SSD over a hard drive...less likely to fail with rough handling.")

 

Plus I did not even say that the display is "the most fragile part", I said it had a good likelihood of being the most easily damaged piece (and, in full context, especially in a laptop with SSD). Feel free to drop a dozen laptops from various heights and see how many survive with screen intact, ;-)

 

But seriously, I'm glad yours survived.

[Reezekeys]

For those with Macbook Pros (not Airs, sorry), let me suggest something that might help with concerns about the built-in audio. While I use the headphone out of my MBP almost all the time, I do occasionally run into issues with ground loops so I pack this in my computer bag:

 

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2452/toslinktoananlog.jpg

 

It comes with the toslink cable that fits the MBP output, and an AC adapter. Search for "monoprice toslink to analog" and you'll see a few sources, some as low as $18.

 

I would use it all the time except, 1) the output is lower than the headphone out, so I have to sometimes switch my QSCs to mic-level input to get the volume I need, making it a little more hissy (though not noticeable when playing), and 2) two more pieces dangling off my laptop (I'm counting the AC adapter)! The main thing is, when there are grounding issues on a gig, this little box is a lifesaver!

[Joe Muscara]

All Intel-based Mac laptops and a few of the later PPC models have accelerometers (Sudden Motion Sensor or SMS) for just that reason, to detect that the computer is falling and park the drive heads to reduce the risk of damage to the hard drive. However, "Computers with Solid State Drives (SSD) or Flash Storage do not use SMS as the drives have no moving parts."

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

A quick search says Dell Latitudes might have such sensors, so I don't know why you had problems, Guru. I guess other damage could have happened besides the heads hitting the platters, or you have a model that didn't include this. Sorry.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell/246858-do-dell-have-accelerometers.html

[Dglavko]

BTW, are you happy with the audio performance of the built-ins? While I'm a fan of using built-ins and a lot of them are adequate, I don't expect them to be stellar.

 

A good way to scope the audio performance is Rightmark Audio Analyzer. Years ago (say, 2004) when I collected data from anyone who'd run benchmarks, Macs weren't even as good as a number of Windows laptops. They may be better now. But there weren't awful (and some Windows MOBOs were truly awful).

I really did not expect to be happy with the headphone jack but have been quite happy with it. I A B'd it with my Nord Stage 2 in the same room, using only my ears. A scope test is enticing though and I may try that.

[Dglavko]

For those with Macbook Pros (not Airs, sorry), let me suggest something that might help with concerns about the built-in audio. While I use the headphone out of my MBP almost all the time, I do occasionally run into issues with ground loops so I pack this in my computer bag:

 

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2452/toslinktoananlog.jpg

 

It comes with the toslink cable that fits the MBP output, and an AC adapter. Search for "monoprice toslink to analog" and you'll see a few sources, some as low as $18.

 

I would use it all the time except, 1) the output is lower than the headphone out, so I have to sometimes switch my QSCs to mic-level input to get the volume I need, making it a little more hissy (though not noticeable when playing), and 2) two more pieces dangling off my laptop (I'm counting the AC adapter)! The main thing is, when there are grounding issues on a gig, this little box is a lifesaver!

Why not Macbook airs too? (though I have not yet encountered hum on mine)

[Reezekeys]

Why not Macbook airs too? (though I have not yet encountered hum on mine)

As I understand it, the airs do not have the combination optical/analog output. It's just a plain headphone jack. Maybe they are on some of the Airs, I don't know.

 

After re-reading what I wrote four posts above this, I realized that I wasn't as clear as I should have been: this box connects to the digital optical output of the MBP, which is incorporated into the headphone jack; it's a "combo" jack. Using this box means you're bypassing the MBP internal sound card entirely. Also because it's an optical connection, you minimize or eliminate any ground loop issues.

[Ashville.Guru]

Feel free to drop a dozen laptops from various heights and see how many survive with screen intact, ;-)

 

Good idea. I volunteer to standardize benchmarks (gotta see if FallBench.com is taken) - as long as you're sponsoring the test machines. Incidentally, a dozen might constitute inadequate sample size.

 

On a much less lighter note, the same laptop survived a horrific road accident about a year ago. With just a padded sleeve in a cloth bag, the machine was thrown about 15-20 feet. Not a single scratch on the display or anywhere else, everything perfectly functional. Eight people lost their lives in that accident. You'll have to excuse me for not sharing your views on the fragility of laptop screens.

 

A quick search says Dell Latitudes might have such sensors, so I don't know why you had problems, Guru. I guess other damage could have happened besides the heads hitting the platters, or you have a model that didn't include this. Sorry.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell/246858-do-dell-have-accelerometers.html

 

Thanks, Joe. When I bought my machine, I was very happy that it had a free-fall sensor. And then I went ahead and completely neglected the 1-step configuration required to make it functional in Ubuntu. Geekfail .

[Joe Muscara]

When I bought my machine, I was very happy that it had a free-fall sensor. And then I went ahead and completely neglected the 1-step configuration required to make it functional in Ubuntu. Geekfail .

[AnotherScott]

You'll have to excuse me for not sharing your views on the fragility of laptop screens.

Again, I'm not saying that they are fragile. Hell, there are a gazillion ipads out there, and they probably get dropped all the time, and most are fine. But IF something is going to fail from a drop, what do you think would damage more easily than the screen? (On an SSD system.) Those iPads that do show up on eBay "as is" are certainly very likely to indicate cracked screen as the reason. Not because they're fragile, but because everything else in these things is pretty much inherently shock proof by nature

 

To bring this back to the actual question that brought this up, I'm not convinced that a Macbook with screen is more road-friendly than a Mac Mini without one, simply by virtue of the fact that the Macbook is built for transport, which was your assertion. My feeling is that that might be offset by the fact that the Mini has no screen, so has one less point of vulnerability to begin with. Obviously, neither of us can prove anything here, though. I'm not going to provide an equal number of Mac Minis to drop as Macbooks for our test. ;-)

[zephonic]

Don't have much time to post at length, but Cubase 6 reports the following latencies on my '09 MacPro:

 

Avid Mbox 3 Pro: In 4.785 ms Out 4.785 ms

Focusrite Saffire LE: 5.941 ms Out 5.941 ms

Built-in Audio: In 6.848 ms Out 6.939 ms

 

 

I'll run some projects later this week and see how the different devices hold up.

 

edit:

All at a 128 sample buffer and 44.1 KHz sample rate, I forgot to say.

 

Interestingly, Soundflower's latency is lower than that of the Built-in audio: In 5.805 ms Out 5.805 ms

 

Go figure...

 

[AnotherScott]

One thing I discovered on my Air is that, at first, my latency was terrible. Then I logged out, and logged in as the alternate user that I set up as a plain vanilla system that I use for troubleshooting... and then the latency (for my purposes) disappeared. So (for anyone for whom this may not be obvious), it's definitely worth testing on a clean, minimal system install, that has nothing except what you need for the music apps. Yes, in hindsight, that seems self-evident. ;-) I guess that some of the stuff I've installed on my main system has created some additional background processing workload.

[Joe Muscara]

Why do you suggest a different system install when a different user account will do, based on what you wrote? Or are you just mixing up the terminology?

[AnotherScott]

Sorry for the ambiguity. I was loosely referring to a minimal version of your system install, without additions... I.e. yes, what you could generally get with a simple User switch, which is what I did. In my case, it made a world of difference.

[Reezekeys]

I guess that some of the stuff I've installed on my main system has created some additional background processing workload.

Not sure where I heard this but I do remember reading that a cluttered desktop will slow your computer down. Never heard the explanation why. Does this describe the account that you were experiencing more latency?

 

Also I'm not bragging, gloating, etc... just throwing this out there: I used to be careful about what other processes were running when I was doing gigs with the laptop. At one point I had disabled Spotlight, thinking that indexing might kick in while I was streaming samples. This turned out to be a false assumption. The only thing I do now at a gig is just make sure I do a cold start, then I turn off Airport. My laptop is not "optimized for music" in any way. I do my email, internet, photos, word processing, etc. on it and everything has been fine on gigs. A big YMMV of course but using the same rig on a few hundred gigs over the course of over four years is a great way to find out what works and what doesn't work for laptop gigging.

[Ekewaka]

Cluttered desktops has seldom to do with performance, just more files. If too many files and little disk space, VM can't work properly.

 

I turn of Wifi for Mainstage MPB use, only thing I think is needed. WiFi roaming could be expensive with bad transmitters and a noisy environment...