Extreme drops with VAD on M1 max

[antoszka]

Hi there,

just got hold of an M1 Max notebook for work and no matter the settings (latency, buffer size in DAW etc., etc.,) I get extreme clicks and dropouts. Had no such issues on M1 Mac Mini (1st gen) — anybody had some experience here and can recommend anything? Perhaps Merging has a beta version of VAD I could try?

Perhaps the Ethernet dongle is an issue?

Code: Select all

    USB 3.1 Bus:

      Host Controller Driver: AppleT6000USBXHCI

        USB 10/100/1000 LAN:

          Product ID: 0x8153
          Vendor ID: 0x0bda  (Realtek Semiconductor Corp.)
          Version: 30.00
          Serial Number: 000001
          Speed: Up to 5 Gb/s
          Manufacturer: Realtek
          Location ID: 0x02200000 / 1
          Current Available (mA): 900
          Current Required (mA): 288
          Extra Operating Current (mA): 0


Antoni

[antoszka]

Code: Select all

en5: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
   options=6467<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,TSO4,TSO6,CHANNEL_IO,PARTIAL_CSUM,ZEROINVERT_CSUM>
   ether 00:e0:4c:68:03:7c
   inet6 fe80::8e:fb52:5f50:d05b%en5 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x15
   inet 192.168.1.132 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
   inet6 fd1f:b009:b76e:1:8a7:bfd7:54e8:532b prefixlen 64 autoconf secured
   nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
   media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
   status: active


[antoszka]

Yeah, I thought this is pretty much abandonware.

Looks I'm gonna have to abandon ship as well.

[Mike Hatch]

Hi Antoni

I've got it working on an M1 Max with the Atmos Renderer. I've found that as soon as you launch the renderer you need to increase the latency in the VAD to 10ms! Not ideal, but it's working fine for me. Also, seems better when wifi is off.

Good luck

Mike Hatch

[antoszka]

Hi, thanks for your response.

I've had some more experience with the setup, it seems that it very much depends on the Ethernet dongle/interface you use with the machine.

Initially I tried with two rather generic Realtek Ethernet adapters, one standalone usb-c, the other included in an expensive Thunderbolt-4 extender (I had high hopes for that, but the actual Ethernet turned out to be pretty much exactly the same usb device).

The only Ethernet dongle I'm having reasonable predictable results with is the original TB2 to Ethernet apple dongle chained via the Apple TB4 to TB2 adapter. I still wouldn't want to be take this setup along with me for a live production.

What adapter are you using?

Regards,

Antoni

[Mike Hatch]

Hi Antoni

I've used two types of adaptor successfully:

QGeeM Gigabit adaptor

Vemont USB Hub 5 in 1 adaptor

Good luck!

Mike Hatch

[ngwese]

To add an additional data point - I found running VAD on a 2021 16" M1 Max notebook paired with a USB-C based ethernet adaptor to be unreliable at seemingly any latency, buffer size, and sample rate.

I was about to give up after trying multiple ethernet adaptors until I discovered the Sonnet Thunderbolt AVB Adapter (https://www.sonnettech.com/product/thun ... rview.html). While the cost is much higher than other portable options it has proven to be nearly flawless running at 1ms (48) at 48kHz (which is what I normally run). In addition I found that I could push down to 0.67ms (32) at 48kHz as well as higher sample rates (with higher latencies) if need be.