Latency Comparissons

[andrei23]

Has anyone ever tried comparing the MegaDrum against it's closest commercial competition?

Would be interesting if some latency specs were available for the Alesis Trigger I/O or Roland TMC-6. I could find nothing online, and their support reps know jack. (Maybe they hide the important specs for a reason?) Something like viewtopic.php?f=3&t=207

All I do know for sure is... on one hand, we have the video of Anders jamming away in seemingly real-time, and on the other you find TONS of complaints on Google about the Trigger I/O's latency issues. I suppose that's good enough for me!

[angr77]

Hi!

Good question. No real comparison have been done to my knowledge. Dmitri made some measurements when the ARM based MegaDrum was released. Check the viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2079 post.

The ARM based MegaDrum have a latency on 1.2-1.8 ms from the trigger to the USB bus output. Looking on the forums on the king...Roland TD-30...which if it is used as a trigger for computer based VSTs would have a latency on 4-5ms...(trigger to USB)

Then you have the computer, VST and finally the soundcards latency, which in normal cases would add another 4-5 ms.

I have a post on my site where i was digging in to this problem and made several tests. Result...using Windows 8 in 64bit mode, 24 bit, 96khz i received an latency on 1.3 ms!

http://powerhell.wordpress.com/about/zo ... windows-8/

To summerize the latency from the trigger to sound card output on my system i would claim that my system have something like 2.5-3.0 ms.

Back to the question...the TMC-6 and the trigger i/o are real old designs from 2002 which don't use USB at all, only traditional midi transfer so I would argu that the latency are extremely high on these type of boxes. All manufactures have left the market totally wide open...If you want to use your computer as the sound heart, many trigger inputs and the freedome to choose your own sound from loads of VSTs, My conclusion is that the MegaDrum is damn good choice!!

Angr77

[airflamesred]

What do you use to measure the latency Anders? I'd be interested in following this up with the effects of cable length etc.

[dmitri]

What do you use to measure the latency Anders? I'd be interested in following this up with the effects of cable length etc.

I doubt you will see any latency difference with different cable lengths unless you mean kilometers long cables.

[angr77]

I agree regarding cables. Check my post above...there you see the software for measure latency.

[airflamesred]

Thanks folks.

[chrishopf]

Getting latency from cables is bullshit. The speed of electrons in copper is light velocity. Latency is a result of processing time from the software in the microcontrollers and the computer.

Christian

[airflamesred]

Getting latency from cables is bullshit. The speed of electrons in copper is light velocity. Latency is a result of processing time from the software in the microcontrollers and the computer.

Christian

What's all that about? Merely asking a question

[andrei23]

Thank you all for your input!

I have no doubt that MegaDrum beats them all - was just curious by how much as I have a bit of (disappointing) experience with the others. USB is definitely faster than MIDI. Interesting to hear about the TD-30! But I guess it comes down to the basics - it is busy generating the sounds that you're actually trying to replace (if you're using external VSTs). A trigger has no business generating sounds - its job is to send notes, and as quickly as possible - which is why I love the MegaDrum concept (just ordered one, and can't wait to start playing with it). On the VST issue, I recommend SaviHost - it is a free wrapper that lets you run VSTs as if they were stand-alone EXEs, no need to have a full DAW eating up system resources... http://www.hermannseib.com/english/savihost.htm

Definitely Windows8 is faster than its predecessors, and 64bit runs circles around 32 (I use that configuration on my desktop, and it runs Pro Tools beautifully - love it when the Mac guys diss PCs even as they're busy rebooting after yet another crashed session). Unfortunately, until I get a new laptop, I'm stuck on Win7 at 32bit (though I turned off all fancy graphics & desktop effects). My current sound card is an Audigy2 (PCMCIA), which runs all the way up to 24/192... and oddly enough I did notice that higher sampling rates actually tend to get lower latency, to a point (which is the opposite of what I expected, considering it is more samples to process for each second of audio). I will give it a go with that configuration, and if it doesn't cut it I have a couple of outboard USB and Firewire sound processors I can try as well (though I'm skeptical that the interface - Firewire 400 via a PCMCIA Firewire card - might eat up any advantages the better sound processor might give me... guess you have to try to find out!) All else fails, ASUS has some nice laptops for around $500.