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Old 08-29-2016, 08:41 AM   #22
snooks
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Join Date: Sep 2015
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
As noise_construct pointed out, it's not about track count, but latency.
TB would get you the lowest latency right out of the box.
On a laptop, on desktop PCIe is slightly less involved and probably shaves a few clock cycles off round trip latency.
Quote:
The CPU will never be bothered to have to help manage the I/O system. You'll have headroom to increase buffers and still hit the required latency. That means more plugins.
This is EXACTLY what you want for a live performance or live sound system.
But if you run a Mac then the inherently bad (compared to PC) low latency performance may well wipe out any performance increase. But I do agree that PCIe (and by that token, Thunderbolt) has less system overhead than USB on the same system and is capable of slightly lower latency.

And anything that allows you move that Mac closer to PC low latency performance is a great thing, it's no wonder you guys are stoked about this.
Quote:
If the newer high falootin thunderbolt laptops and interfaces are too expensive, a good 2nd choice is older firewire systems. The cheap USB interface on a cheap USB only laptop might only barely be able to achieve the required latency and have no headroom left before you even insert the first plugin.
It's pointless choosing Firewire over USB - it's just not better for the vast majority of audio users, if any. When your 2nd computer gets fried/flooded/stolen, at least you can use USB on a new one.
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