SD3: is there a "low latency" mode? Latency in Cubase 10 is unplayable in r/t

[jdmille2]

I just upgraded to SD3 and Cubase 10.  At first I thought that Cubase was misconfigured for playing soft-synths in real-time, as the latency for SD3 was dozens of milliseconds.  But then I loaded another soft synth (Ivory) and set them to both play – and it’s SD3 that’s lagging far behind.

I have no problem with long-latencies when not trying to play parts, e.g., computing bleeds, etc., for ultimately better sound, but is there some way to tell SD3 to forget all that and just play with as low latency as possible?

Cubase has a “Constrain Delay Compensation” button that has that effect on FXs, but it has no effect on SD3.  I did find that in the Cubase “VST Plugin Manager” I could disable “ASIO Guard” for SD3 and that had the desired effect – latency become low enough to be playable – but is that really the right way to fix this?  Basically that just tells Cubase to not “protect” that audio stream from flow issues, as I understand it.  It seems like it would be much better to tell SD3 to go into a low-latency mode than to tell Cubase to take off the audio safety net.

— jdm

Topic

[Scott]

What ASIO audio device and what buffer size are you using?

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[jdmille2]

Hey Scott – thanks for the quick reply.  I use all RME gear, with the main being an RME Fireface UFX.  I can set the buffer size down to 64 (I’d usually use 128 or 192) and still, without disabling ASIO Guard, either globally (bad idea) or in the VST Plugin Manager for SD3 specifically, the latency for SD3 is at least a dozen ms – unusable.  But like I said, disabling ASIO-Guard in VST Plugin Manager *does* make it playable, so that’s good to know.  If that truly is the right way to address the issue, hallelujah, let’s get that documented for everyone else, so they don’t have to bang their heads against the wall, too.  But methinks that indicates some mismatch between what Cubase is expecting and what SD3 is expecting, such that you guys might wanna take a look at that handshake to maximize the total performance.

I’m happy to try different things, etc., to help characterize this further.  FWIW, my day job is as a computer scientist, so I’m not afraid to dig in, as it were….

— jdm

[Scott]

From what i know about ASIO Guard, it is not used for real time vst instrument tracking. It’s for lowering the CPU load when mixing. I leave it off when tracking with S3 and turn it on when mixing (if I need to).

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Jack 007]

Also: do you use your UFX with Firewire or USB? ==> USB and windows need some tweaks to get it right.

• I found a solitary USB buss with it’s own controller chip a necessary thing. Bought an expensive card, Sonnet 4x FL1100 USB3 controller, it a needs PCIe socket with 4 PCIe lanes.
• You can remove all unneeded USB drivers from your system with a free tool: USBdeview.exe. All white ones are leftovers from removed hardware, and you can safely un install them: don’t remove the mouse and keyboard ones … !
• Switch of Power Management for ALL USB hubs in device manager.  (Switch off Windows Update PERMANENTLY with windows update switch, because it keeps activating it). See picture 1.
• Advisable is to turn off fast startup, picture 2, as it leaves some earlier left over settings active maybe.

J

[Mark King]

That’s odd as I am not experiencing this myself and I don’t have anything as good as RME.  Also I don’t do any tweaking for USB ( I have a Zoom Livetrack L20) I do agree that the ASIO guard should be off though as when it is enabled you can get inconsistent results. What you mention does sound like this. I find if I work on SD3 alone with ASIO guard then it is fine but as you add instruments the latency gets worse. Just turn it off and enable later when/if required.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[jdmille2]

Thanks, all.  I use Mac, now Windows – actually, a Hackintosh, built on Core i7-4670 “Skylake” @ 4.8 Ghz.

And I guess I was not clear: I get very low latency using USB on the FireFace UFX: 1.396 ms using Cubase buffer size of 64 samples.  (Or more conservatively, <3ms at 192 samples)   This is why I was so surprised to have heinous latency with SD3 out of the box.  HOWEVER, that is “fixed” essentially by turning off Cubase ASIO-Guard, either globally or just for SD3 in the VST Plugin Manager.

This seems odd to me, as no other VST soft synth that I have (including heavy-weights like Ivory) requires this for low-latency real-time playing.  Perhaps SD3 isn’t properly reporting latency to Cubase via the VST3 interface?  Or, as I suspected in my original post, SD3 is doing some extra processing that, while desirable during mix down, add too much latency for real-time playing, and thus could/should be turned off until then.

If disabling ASIO Guard for the SD3 plugin is really is the right thing to do, I guess that’s fine.  I suggest that become part of the SD3 installation instructions and manual, so that others don’t have to waste precious studio time figuring that out for themselves.  And if there is some better way, e.g., disable “extra” processing in SD3 until needed, I’d like to know that, too.

— jdm

ps – if desired, I could quantify the SD3 latency with ASIO Guard enabled, esp. compared to other soft synths, e.g., Ivory.

1

Thanked by: pbony

[Mark King]

Now I’ve just learnt something. I didn’t know you could turn ASIO guard of on an individual basis

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[Author]

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