how can I get better latency on xp mc

[Monika.mhz]

Well, plain and simple a lot of software can have trouble with 64-bit. Especially XP-64. You'll be hard pressed to find drivers etc. More likely you'll find vista 64 compatability than xp 64.

Going 64-bit can be quite the headache. drivers, software, struggling with VSTs, etc.

[dj_rican]

Well, plain and simple a lot of software can have trouble with 64-bit. Especially XP-64. You'll be hard pressed to find drivers etc. More likely you'll find vista 64 compatability than xp 64.

Going 64-bit can be quite the headache. drivers, software, struggling with VSTs, etc.

Well you got me confused... loking @ your site I thought you were all about going 64-bit.

[Monika.mhz]

I am, actually! I think everyone should move over to 64-bit. It's more stable, it's faster, and MIDI jitter/latency drops significantly.

However it takes a tech-savvy mind to navigate the hurdles of jumping onto a ship that not really everyone (including developers) is ready for. And like I said I'd recommend vista 64 over xp 64 any day.

While I had a mostly seamless transition in my studio to ALL 64-bit I still had some hiccups and snags that I had to do some creative problem solving on. And that's just vista 64. xp 64 has far far less drivers and compatability, and is built with the ingenuity and ease of use as a rube goldberg machine.

so...end of story?

Go vista 64 or stick with XP-MCE. I'm just saying vista 64 reduces latency/jitter, but it's not quite ready for the non savvy user. If you've got the brains, vista 64 sure has the brawn!

[nem0nic]

Right now, if you're using Traktor, going 64bit doesn't give you anything over a 32bit counterpart. Traktor can't currently address larger amounts of RAM, and has no specific 64bit optimizations. You can see the Traktor developers talk about this in the "On the Record #8" thread in the NI forums.

So we know that there are no benefits to using Vista 64 if you're using Traktor. But at least there's no drawbacks, right? Wrong. Besides the issues that RSDJ mentions, there is also the lack of options to tweak and optimize the OS. This is especially true when it comes to DPC optimization. One of the major offenders is the lack of control over Vista's Power Management options. There's nothing like SpeedSwitchXP XP for Vista, so you're left to the built in Power Schemes, which aren't nearly as granular. Overall, DPC tweaking is a big part of getting that perfect audio computer, and in this regard Vista doesn't perform as well as XP.

There are also more inter-related services in Vista than in XP, so service tweaking is much more limited than in XP. And dealing with ACPI issues is next to impossible in Vista.

[Monika.mhz]

Nemonic is right on the money.

The only real advantage you're going to consistently see is MIDI processing, which is outside any of the pieces of software you use.

And of course if you "tweak" your operating system then vista tweaks are far far different.

However, it should be noted that Multi-core processor support is FAR better inside Vista than in XP, and even more so in 64-bit. So while that fancy quad-core laptop you've got is wasted in XP, in vista it can actually take advantage of that multi-core action.

edit: I should also mention DPC problems that used to happen with a wireless connection/driver and audio/usb are no longer present in Vista.

[Karlos Santos]

I have to echo nem0nics post he really is spot on. This has been debated a lot
over at N.I.
The amount of people posting about ACPI problems are increasing all the time.

[Monika.mhz]

Again, we should note. 'only for the savvy' ^_~

On a personal note: Every aspect of my DAW is showing noted improvement though (from DPC, to Jitter/latency, to performance, to memory allocation, etc.), so I personally can't complain, haha.

-------------
back to the original topic, one thing is to try is to have a dual boot of two different versions of MCE. (I do this pretty consistently) One that's tweaked for live performance, and the other that's tweaked for everyday use. In the live performance one, turn off the media center, don't install the wireless card at all, if it's an amd, don't install cool and quiet, etc. basically it's an opportunity to only install the things you NEED. remember the more drivers that run, the more you're running the risk of something conflicting and causing a DPC or Jitter issue.

[nem0nic]

You're not going to see ANY advantage to running Vista (any flavor) if the developers don't take advantage of it. The Traktor developers have stated on the record that they currently don't. And there's nothing in Vista that makes MIDI processing any better than XP.

Multi core optimization is also a per application thing. And while Vista is certainly more scalable than XP when it comes to utilizing more cores, right now there aren't any processors that tax XP in this regard - let alone Vista. So we are not likely to see the fruits of this kind of optimization until the successor to Windows 7 comes along.

And at their cores, Vista is MUCH more bloated than XP. According to InfoWorld's benchmarking results, even when Vista is "stripped to the bone, with every new UI enhancement turned off and every new background service disabled, Vista is a good 40 percent slower than XP at a variety of business productivity tasks". You need twice the computer to run Vista smoothly as you do XP - that's not at all what I would call efficient.

And then there are the well known and documented audio problems in Vista. The MMCSS service is a total mess - throttling network speeds whenever there is audio or video playback. But guess what happens when you're running a studio and recording to / playing back from a network drive (that ProTools has given it's OK to as a valid audio drive)? That's right, kids, it chokes. Thanks Vista (this is the main reason I rolled my Vista 64 quad core recording computer back to XP - all is well now).

So I can't recommend Vista for any real-time, mission critical work - especially if it's audio related. The only time I would recommend Vista is if you're running software that is fully 64bit optimized and can address a metric fuck-ton of RAM (3D modeling comes to mind). In that case, it's really a decent option. But for audio work, Vista is a pig.

[Karlos Santos]

Thanks Vista (this is the main reason I rolled my Vista 64 quad core recording computer back to XP - all is well now).

Yep, again more and more people are doing this to run Traktor.
People are buying brand new Dell Studios and zapping Vista as soon as the lappy is out of the box. Ok for people with their own registered copy of XP though !

[Monika.mhz]

The advantages I discussing the advantage of purely 64-bit, not neccessarially vista.

And you absolutely WILL see advantages even in software that has not been optimized for 64-bit operating systems.

x64 has more registers(instead of 8, it's got 16: wow!), and a better FPU design.

I.E: you're missing clock cycles, sometimes up to 1000 per second by having poor memory registration in 32-bit.

Why does this make a difference for us using MIDI?

It should be clear, if the MIDI driver is poorly designed, it's missing clock cycles, which means added latency and jitter (because sometimes it WONT miss those cycles)

Floating point math is done much more intelligently on a 64-bit operating system, EVEN on a 32-bit application. which means even better multi-core support, and better MIDI implimentation.

Also for those of us using DSP/VSTs...lets not even get into how awesome this is.

It is VERY possible to see up to a 30% increase in performance from simply moving to a 64-bit operating system.

While this is not consistent and across the board. There is a reason why I finally bit the bullet and converted my entire studio over.