latency in Ableton - question

i've been setting up Ableton 7 on my PC, and in the tutorial DVD they say to set the latency as short as you can, optimally to 256 samples in and out for a total of 11.6ms latency, but when i tried that everything sounded distorted as fuck. so i backed it off until the demo track sounded like it was supposed to, and i got 736 samples I/O for a total latency of 33.4ms which i know sucks ass for MIDI controllers bc they won't have immediacy.

my question is: i'm running a 1.6GHz AMD Sempron 2800 with 1GB of RAM so i know i'm not weak in processing but my motherboard came with a SoundMAX integrated 7.1 digital audio chip. i really don't want to shell out for a new sound card, but is that the weak spot in my audio chain? i've had it for 2 yrs now and even played DVDs with a surround setup and it sounded excellent. i was hoping i could just upgrade the RAM to 2GB but i don't know if that will solve the problem.

  Rubin Farr said:

i've been setting up Ableton 7 on my PC, and in the tutorial DVD they say to set the latency as short as you can, optimally to 256 samples in and out for a total of 11.6ms latency, but when i tried that everything sounded distorted as fuck. so i backed it off until the demo track sounded like it was supposed to, and i got 736 samples I/O for a total latency of 33.4ms which i know sucks ass for MIDI controllers bc they won't have immediacy.

 

my question is: i'm running a 1.6GHz AMD Sempron 2800 with 1GB of RAM so i know i'm not weak in processing but my motherboard came with a SoundMAX integrated 7.1 digital audio chip. i really don't want to shell out for a new sound card, but is that the weak spot in my audio chain? i've had it for 2 yrs now and even played DVDs with a surround setup and it sounded excellent. i was hoping i could just upgrade the RAM to 2GB but i don't know if that will solve the problem.

Um. It's totally your audio hardware, guy. Get something else. And not a Creative.

can you recommend me a nice soundcard i can get for under $200?

do you need inputs or is it mainly used for software only?

i'm mainly using this for Ableton, as well as recording DVD samples with Audacity, but i also use Traktor 3 for mixing and CoolEdit for WAV editing. i have an M-Audio Axiom 25, and a Numark Total Control DJ controller running through MIDI. my entire setup is running through a Peavey PV8 mixer, so you tell me. i have narrowed down two cards that i think would work for me, the M-Audio Audiophile 2496, or the 192. i just don't know if the extra $100 is justified for the 192 for what i need. i would like to record my mixes for distribution if that makes any difference.

For low latency recording (typically) your sound card needs ASIO drivers. If your sound card does not come with them (which I doubt it does since its onboard sound card), you could always try ASIO4ALL which is free.

Yeah, I'd suggest ASIO4ALL first as well. Brought my old Extigy to well under 10ms latency

ASIO4ALL

or

http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll...e=edirol+ua-1ex (cheap)

asio4all plus an outboard m-audio audiophile or edirol ua.

both are cheap as chips and good too.