Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuukka
The 1641 manual says that you should not have any kind of mass storage connected. It will eat the same bandwidth..
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Hi again Tuukka,
I had to revisit some guitar parts for my second band today--and, as I've just received the multitrack recording from a festival show we did in 2006, I decided to use that recording as my basis for relearning some of the sections that I had forgotten over time. As all those tracks are on my external USB 2.0 drive, I figured it might be a good opportunity to see how connecting/using "mass storage" might affect the DPC latency.
First of all, I noticed a few dropouts with the US-1641 on its default latency setting (something that really hasn't happened when I've tested off the system drive). Opened up the DPC Latency Checker tool and caught some big spikes around the 4 ms (4000 μs) range, with both the US-1641 and external hard drive running. Raising the US-1641's latency setting by one notch seemed to help, but that would definitely create too much latency for overdubbing purposes (7 ms in/29 ms out, per REAPER).
While I was at it, I disconnected the US-1641 and tried running the 24-track recording through my E-mu 0404 (PCI) card instead. Interestingly, the external drive access (with the US-1641 detached) caused intermittent DPC latency peaks that almost reached 1 ms, so I can see why TASCAM makes the recommendation to avoid external mass storage--as the additive load really seems like it could impact low-latency audio performance.
Now this makes my situation even tricker because, if I keep the US-1641, I'll either have to record on the system drive or figure out if/how to add a second internal drive to optimize performance. I seem to recall the PC only having one PCI slot as well, although the specs claim there are two. (Maybe there's a factory-installed modem in the other one. I have to check.) So, if I decide to send back the US-1641, it will be a challenge to figure out whether to buy a FireWire card/interface or maybe just stick with PCI (and possibly rip out my E-mu 0404). Actually, since Musician's Fiend (sic) took so long to send my replacement unit, I may have to make up my mind fairly quickly. Argh!
Cheers,
Alan