Motu 324pci Vs. 424pci Vs. Firwire., stutering and latency Options

[hani]

im currently using :

mac g4 1.3 ghz osx 10.3.9
motu pci 324 w/ 1224 IO.
cubase 2.2sx.

i have set my buffer very high (1024 samples). and still getting stutering .
and cant play any vstI synths in real time due to very bad latency .

i cant set the buffer any lower because the stutering will increase .

should i switch to Motu pci 424 or firewire? or switch brands .. will the latency & stutering issues improve?

any cubase users out ther? what do you reccomend? what are you using?
i dont need much!! just the basic 8 out/in digital I/O and if midi is included that would be cool too.

please help.

[quark]

How much RAM do you have installed ??

Check the CPU Meter in Cubase SX, if its most of the time low and suddenly hits overload,
its quite sure you don't have enough RAM on your machine.

[hani]

i got 1 gig ram.

the cpu meter is not behaving like you described.

the anoying part, is the high buffer size that i'm forced to used to avoid further audio stutering and glitching.

for example. a simple project with no VSTI used. 24trks audio.
at a buffer size 512 samples. the audio will stuter every 5 secs.
the only setting that causes the minimal amount of audio interuption or glitching is 1024 samples.. due to the high latency at 25. 465 ms , i cant play any vsti in real time.

[quark]

i'm quite sure your motu interface is not the bottleneck within this system.

Some other ideas for improving your system:

- Try recording with 44.1kHz
- Try recording in 16 bit (i know is not really an option, but will decrease the amount of data transferred over the pci bus)
- Check your harddisk drive.
The faster the disk, the more files you can playback at the same time without stuttering.
Separating audio files and the operating system to two independend disks will increase throughput.
If you have 2 disks installed make sure they are located on different host controllers.

You can find more about system performance on this page:

http://www.macgurus.com/guides/storageaccelguide.php

hope this helps

[ourmanflinty]

I'd agree with Quark, you should investigate the drive side of things.

Do you have any other drives than the internal fitted, a f/w drive or an extra ATA internal?

How full are your drives?

What sample rate and bit rate are you recording at, 24 bit 88.2k uses far more data than 16 bit 44.1k.

You may find that a dedicated fast SCSI controller with a drive or two attached will improve things.

[flemming]

You need to get a 424 card, simple as that. Basically, the 324 wont work properly with os x, not even on a g4. I changed to a 424 a couple of years ago and I haven't had one single problem with my motu setup since. I'm running two HD192 interfaces at full whack most of the time.

Upgrade time! :-)