Dropouts Shmopouts...

It seems that Noize2u and I have been reading and attempting to help a large number of people with drop-out problems. I also notice that most of the time (not all) people are mentioning how they "got their latency as low as they can" and it's still happening...

Guess what...that might be making the problem worse...

Let me explain something about latency, it exists, in part, because some PC's just are not big and fast enough to process the audio at real-time, hence, the delay from going into the sound card to going out of the speakers. The "buffer" that is rated in size by kilobytes (generally anyway) is a PC's way of trying to remedy that with having that space to store and process the audio before shipping it out the speakers.

That said, playing with your buffer is a double-edged sword. Yes, it will give ya a warm fuzzy feeling by showing you that your latency has went down, however, at the same time, it is putting even more stess on the computer to try and keep up to a lower latency with even less of a buffer to work with. I have found that most of the time the default settings that programs give you are very close to optimal for your computer.

Hopefully I explained that well enough. Now, what kind of solutions are out there for the problem.

If you just can't stand the latency there are a couple things you can do. The obvious answer is go out and build yourself the biggest, baddest PC that money can buy and stuff it as full of RAM as you can and then overclock the CPU 'til it's smokin'. While this isn't the ideal answer, and probably not the one you are looking for, it is, in fact, an option.

On a more serious and practical level, lets look at how your computer is set up. Does you sound card operate on an IRQ all by itself, or is it sharing with other devices. While many cards can operate when sharing IRQ's, some also will just freeze a PC solid if it is sharing with anything. So, if you can, get it on it's own, every little extra bit of streamlining is good.

Also, go to the sound card manufacturer's website. There are a couple good reasons to do this, first, you can make sure you have the latest drivers for your card, and with new drivers, most manufacturers display a list of what the new drivers actually improved on or fixed. In addition to the driver issue, many manufacturers also have a support forum of some sort. It might be a knowledge base that you can search for answers to your questions. It might be a threaded message board, like we have here at H.R.C., where users of the products ask each other and technicians about their problems, and often share tips and tricks between themselves to get the best performance from their cards.

Ultimately, the best answer to get rid of latency is buying the biggest, fastest PC you can, tho this isn't a financially wise move, due to the fact that your PC is outdated by the time you take it out of the box, it is a technically wise move. This type of situation is why I have always advised home recording artists to custom build a PC. Doing this can allow you to upgrade your PC easier to keep up with current speeds without having to buy a whole new PC. Most name-brand PC's will allow a certain amount of upgrading, but not much, so it is wise for gearheads like us to have a very upgradable, open-architecture PC for that reason alone.