Delay experience w. RME HDSPe MADIface

[gabriel]

Dear all,

I'm looking for any throughput delay results of Pyramix Native in combination with a MADI stagebox and an RME HDSPe MADIface (ExpressCard). And btw: how is interoperability of RME card with Pyramix Native?

Many thanks in advance

Gabriel

[gabriel]

Answering myself after buying RME Micstasy M and HDSPe MADIface, running into a Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz. Measurement path is RME Micstasy mic input at fs=48 kHz, delay compensation ON (for daisy chaining several Micstasys), RME MADIface (ExpressCard), Pyramix native simple mixer loop with input recording to disk on 24 tracks@24 bit and strip tools with eq in every channel, MADIface, output of Pyramix routed back to Micstasy and set for Digital Output, MOTU 2408 converting ADAT output of MIcstasy to analogue.

Pyramix native v6.2 with Windows XP SP2 32bit:
- MADIface ASIO buffer setting=32 results in roundtrip delay of 178 samples (3.7 ms), but with lots of clicks
- MADIface ASIO buffer setting=64 results in roundtrip delay of 241 samples (5 ms), but with clicks
- MADIface ASIO buffer setting=128 results in roundtrip delay of 370 samples (7.7 ms), no more clicks

Logic 9 (similar configured as Pyramix) with Mac OSX 10.6:
- Core Audio I/O buffer setting=32 samples results in troubles with recording to disk
- Core Audio I/O buffer setting=64 samples results in roundtrip delay of 226 samples (4.7 ms), recording to disk now working

RME TotalMix hardware monitoring
- results in 82 samples (1.7 ms), where 0.25 ms is from Micstasy AD converter, 0.437 ms (21 samples) from delay compensation and rest (1 ms) sourced from DA converter and TotalMix

I tried to find the bottleneck with Windows/Pyramix, but different configurations of Pyramix with different load (no equalizers, less tracks, digitizing project) seemed to have no influence on clicks. CPU load was also pretty low. Since RME hardware monitor worked without problems, it looks like an issue between RME MADIface and Pyramix, probably Windows and/or ASIO driver limit. Logic 9 with OSX 10.6 clearly increased CPU load with lower buffer settings.

Gabriel

[David Jacques]

Did you read this page regarding bootcamp and Pyramix :
http://forum.merging.com/viewtopic.php?t=3765

[fl]

Did you read this page regarding bootcamp and Pyramix :
http://forum.merging.com/viewtopic.php?t=3765

That was posted in 2008, and since then NVDIA has issued updates of its own for the drivers, which improve things significantly, so the laptop2go drivers are not strictly necessary any more. The NVDIA drivers that come with Boot Camp 3.0/3.1 are now sufficiently recent to offer the low DPC latencies - and are certain to run properly with the Mac hardware.

[gabriel]

In fact it works on both OS with correct buffer settings. If I really need lowest delay, I can use the HW monitoring of RME. The good thing is, you can configure TotalMix even for an M/S decoder. The only problem I still have in Windows is a conflict between an application of the onboard audio chip and RME. Yet, it's not possible to select the internal audio as an output device, which would be nice sometimes. As soon as the RME MADIface is ejected from the Macbook, the conflict disappears and output thru onboard audio is possible again. Any hints for that?

cheers, Gabriel

[fl]

The latest Realtek audio drivers get along better with the RME drivers.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/DOWNLOADS/dow ... Down=false

[gabriel]

Just that simple?

Many thanks, Gabriel