VB-Audio's Forums

I've been using a Focusrite Scarlette 18i8 up until pretty recently for almost all of my Audio needs, but I had a few sound cards lying around and I wanted to see if any of them were better cards with lower latency. I'm currently trying to use an Asus Xonar Essence STX II and I'm finding that it at least appears to be extremely capable.

I'm currently running 24bit 192Khz ASIO with a 128 sample buffer and to my joy/surprise there's almost no crackling of any kind, BUT I can't seem to get any of the virtual inserts working with audition. I also can't seem to get any of the virtual insert cables lower than 2304 samples without crackling occurring.

The cable latency doesn't bother me too much, but it does make me wonder if something odd is going on here. If I remember reading correctly I think if I'm truly using 128 samples at 192Khz shouldn't I really only need a minimum of 128 * 3 samples for each of the insert cables? Also when I go to access the virtual inserts in Adobe Audition the seem to default to a sample rate of 32000 Hz. And no matter what I choose (even 32000) the device can't be opened. Interestingly, if I shut down Voicemeter and just use the essence ASIO directly in audition I can actually open the card at 192000Khz with a buffer size of 16.


The card alone with a 16 buffer size


All attempts to use the virtual insert

Is my sound card lying about sample rate or something, or do the virtual inserts not support 192Khz? I've actually also tried to drop sample rate down to 96000Hz (the sample rate that works with the focusrite) but this doesn't seem to work either... Any ideas why this is happening?

sure!

Our Virtual ASIO driver cannot get in sync with a main stream at 192 kHz using 16 sample buffer.
the main stream will possibly work, but the virtual ASIO driver won't.

You may know that Windows cannot manage event below 1 ms (192 sample at 192kHz).
and we consider that Windows cannot sync 2 process in reliable way below 3ms ( 576 sample at 192 kHz)
and to get secure sync and stable steam we recommend to not go below 5ms buffer size (960 samples at 192 kHz).

you could say that your focusrite is working with 16 samples buffer ! yes, but it's totally fake,
they callback audio processing with 16 samples, but they do it several times in the same time cell...
and at the end you have the same latency than if using 256 sample buffers,
with 16 sample buffer you are just stressing your computer for nothing.

also you may get other problem with focusrite ASIO as it is explained here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=506