Burr Johnson: A low latency setup with the Fireface

New York based guitar player Burr Johnson (burrboe@optonline.net) gives an outstanding performance with his MIDI guitar and explains the importance of a low latency setup for his work.

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[AvocaSingleTrack]

Ok ... the guitar to midi , please give the specifics of what you're using ???? Thanks !

[al tana]

i have a fireface 400, could you please tell me how i can get those killer bass and piano sounds?

thats unbeleivable dude, what a killer feature

[Ian Ross]

that's actually my past experience with latency...but that's just not the case with my current setup for whatever reason.  I'm sure whatever you're talking about in terms of measuring true latency is correct. But again, at the end of the day my numbers are still literally 2ms at 64 sample rate. I'm working with a beta version of fl studio right now...maybe that has something to do with it. I was having to set my sample rate at 256 to get my best latency in regular fl10.9

[Ian Ross]

You're probably right...that's something I don't know about. All i can tell you is what my screen says...2ms at 64 sample rate. I was used to 512 on my single core pentium 4. Big difference.

[fito8888]

and yes, CPU has 75% of getting low latencies, and the rest is on audio interfaces, and i repeat again you can't get even 5ms round trip** latency with ur m-audio firewire 410. iv been there with a quad core 4gb ram (mine now)and i know it.. in fact, you cant achieve less than 10ms rtl with PCIE sound cards, and not the m-audio cheap ones, the rme and lynx ones.

[fito8888]

you can never get a 2ms round loop latency latency, even the HD systems can hardly get it and keeping the system stable with it. im sure your RTL is more than 10ms at your lowest buffer size but you can't see it

[Ian Ross]

Your cpu has the biggest role in your latency. Core duo should be fine, but I recommend the full 4gb of ram on a 64-bit operating system to get the lowest latency in your daw. Also firewire > usb (faster/lower latency). I use a m-audio firewire 410. There is a newer model out (610) that is faster and etc...I get 2ms latency with my 4gb ram on my amd 2.8ghz quad. But don't be fooled by quad...2.8 duo is just as fast or faster with most daws. (unless the latest quads are better cores now).

[fito8888]

i thought midi latency depends on how powerful ur computer is on the first place , then comes the soundcard , iv been havin the saffire 6 usb for a while now and im really devastated with the amount of latency im getting which is 12 ms , but i assume thats cuz my pc is only core duo with 2 gb ram only .. somebody correct me if im wrong

[JasTheMusicman]

His guitar is fitted with GraphTech's MIDI Hexpander which has a 13 pin out from the guitar which then goes intoo an Axon AX-100 pitch to MIDI converter. The MIDI out from the AX-100 is then sent to the RME MIDI In and the RME runs via USB into his Macbook Pro running Logic with various AU plug-in's.

[Frans van den Berge]

Burr Johnson, your playing is very inspiring. Thank you. Once I will own a Fender Roland Strat. Or maybe a nice old Digitech midi guitar.

What was the latency used here. 64 samples or 32 samples? Thanks so much.