Best latency settings for Traktor Pro vci100

[Zac Kyoti]

@GoldBar3:

Also, if you're getting weird behavior on the jogs, your settings might need to be tweaked (Controller Manager>Scratch). Try 4% sensitivity, 2% acceleration to start, mess around 'till you find something you like.

This is granting you're not in cd-jog mode or something, that your controls are set up correctly to scratch.

[Mr_Moo]

willinfluence

Ouch!!

What kind of laptop Mac or PC?

Thanks.

Running a stripped down version of Vista 32bit / laptop.
2.2ghz dual Pentium.
3gb RAM.
Traktor is installed on a seperate internal HDD, which also has all my music on it.

[itskindahot]

OK, I'm trying to clarify something as at least as subset of the participants ITT seem to be in the dark about it.

For MIDI over USB, latency is very small. 1 ms latency or less is typical on most systems, some systems might see something around 1.5 ms. (EDIT: this latency occurs due to delay and jitter present during signal transmission over USB.)

However, that is nothing to worry about. Who cares whether your computer receives MIDI messages 0.7 ms after your action or 1.1 ms after your action? Similarly, who cares whether an LED on your controller lights up now or in (now + 0.5) ms? I highly doubt anyone will be able to notice such tiny differences.

On the other hand, the latency in your audio path is very important, simply because latencies we see in practice vary much more widely with the equipment (that is, laptop, operating system, and audio interface) used. (EDIT: also, if you set the latency too low, there can be a severe consequence, namely a buffer underrun which leads to glitches and/or dropouts.)

BOTTOM LINE: your VCI has little to do with the whole latency discussion, as it's a controller and not an audio interface.

[Mr_Moo]

I've also never managed to get the FX working since I bought it. Despite using the FX glitch patch, which didn't do anything but make the glitching sound a little different!

[FoNeM]

Hey everyone. I'm having some pretty nasty latency issues on my MBP I got a couple months ago. I have used Traktor programs for years on my Asus PC running Windows XP and have never had any problems. It was a 2009 model dual core (around 2 GHz processors) and 2 GB RAM. I used the original Audio 2 DJ from NI as well...never had much to complain about.

Anywho, I got this shiny MBP to use just for DJing and my music production. I upgraded to Traktor 2 when it came out as well as bought an Audio 6. Ever since initially using that combo with my Mac, I can't seem to get my latency settings correct. Anything below 512 (whether I'm using 44100 sample rate all the wat to 96000) I get pops after 5 - 10 minutes. Even knocking it up to a whopping 1024, I *still* get artifacts. When I use my Audio 2, I don't have nearly the issues. I can usually keep my latency below 250 ~ 300 and be fine for hours.

I'll admit I am new to Macs, but I'm still a fairly computer savvy guy. Wat can I do to free up my lappy and keep it from choking? BTW, I do have bluetooth and airport disabled. I don't know what else I can kill or if I can make a DJ profile with minimal processes starting up.

[BennyJ]

^^Meh i can never get the latency completely gone on my vci. Ive given up

[FoNeM]

Well, like I've said, it's not the VCI...at least not entirely. When I hook up my Audio 2, I can set the sample rate at 96000 with my latency down to around 320 at the highest and I can play for hours with no artifacts or crackling. I recently upgraded my Mac OS to 10.6 and also updated Traktor to 2.0.3(?) and noticed there were drivers for the new Audio 6 specifically for OSX 10.6. It still didn't help. I'm about to sell my Audio 6 cuz I dropped a bunch of cash on it thinking it would be better and it's just not. I'm pretty disappointed with it.

[onelove]

Another thing to keep in mind that no one here mentioned... if you hear a crackling that very well might be a small static problem from a ground loop and NOT a latency/soundcard issue.

Seems like a stupid common-sense thing to check.. but you never know. Try unplugging your laptop's adapter and see if that fixes it.

[FoNeM]

You know onelove, that's a very good point, however it's not my problem. I did have that issue on my PC when I was trying to stream one of my sets live and the buzzing in the background was indeed caused by the a/c adapter.

The disturbance I'm having is an increasingly horrid distortion in sound where it sounds like my music is going through a phaser windtunnel. It starts out with minor pops here and there and within a matter of seconds, the music is almost unrecognizable. I know it's a latency issue because I have my options window open while playing my tracks and when I notice the distortion coming in, I can drag my latency up higher to eliminate it, but only for a matter of seconds until it stars again.

[onelove]

You know onelove, that's a very good point, however it's not my problem. I did have that issue on my PC when I was trying to stream one of my sets live and the buzzing in the background was indeed caused by the a/c adapter.

The disturbance I'm having is an increasingly horrid distortion in sound where it sounds like my music is going through a phaser windtunnel. It starts out with minor pops here and there and within a matter of seconds, the music is almost unrecognizable. I know it's a latency issue because I have my options window open while playing my tracks and when I notice the distortion coming in, I can drag my latency up higher to eliminate it, but only for a matter of seconds until it stars again.

Rats.. was hoping I could be the knight in shining armor with a simple answer! So much for that...

The only other thing I've experienced close to this was with Traktor's latest driver for my Audio 4 DJ. I was using TPro 1.27 at the time and had to rollback.. I was getting unheard of latency spikes and sound distortion because I had updated the driver.

I don't think that would be your issue though since the Audio 6 should be working perfectly with T2 (it was after all designed for it). I would check the drivers on your cpu and make sure they are all updated. If they have older or newer version you might want to try them all out... I know mac uses a different audio driver than ASIO so that might be where your problem is stemming from...

Unfortunately I don't know much about macs so I can't really be of much use in that respect. I would look at your processor to make sure it's not spiking unnecessarily... on my PC I've disabled all visual themes, indexing of drives, wireless (which you said you have done) certain non-essential services to conserve processor power, changed the paging file size, and also changed the priority of tasks from programs to background services.

I will also say that sometimes you need to disable the wireless card itself and not just the service controlling it... god knows why but it's also worth a shot.

Sorry I can't be more specific but again.. mac's not my forte. I would go to traktor's site and see if they can't be more helpful.. maybe even the tech support (dealing with tech support sucks I know).

One final word of general advice... I would partition off your hard drive and a find a dual boot program (not sure if your bios would naturally handle that or not, mine does but you may need something like BootCamp).. even if only to have 2 separated mac OS. I did this on my win7 computer to have 2 sides:

Internet browsing, production, gaming etc and then a live performance side. Again the live side has severe changes made to the Operating System to give absolute best performance.. but this also is a great help in the case of unexpected technical problems.

Most of the time latency issues are due almost solely to processor problems and driver/application interactions... so that would be where I would focus your search. I would seriously consider having a second OS installed as this helps to lessen the amount of crap you have running at once and leads to a smoother experience most times.