Major Latency issues. Tried everything but finally need help
 

Hey guys, I've been watching these boards for a few months now, reading and researching all I can. I'm also about to attened classes with Berkleemusic.com for Producing With Pro-Tools, which will be great since I'll have enough money to go get my dream 8 core Mac Pro and Digi 003.. But in the meantime...

I'm running a 17' Powerbook G4, I believe 1.5 ghz.
512mb Ram
80 Gb Hardrive (58.45 left)
External Maxtor USB 2.0 Hardrive (not for audio, just for backups)
and for now a Mbox 2 mini connected directly to the USB port on the powerbook.

Plug-Ins include all factory plug-ings, plus Absynth, Reason, Ableton Live, Amplitube, and AmpegSVX

My problem is after trying every possible sequence in the Playback Engine with the H/W playback buffer, and CPU usage,
i can not get rid of this horrid 15-30 second latency after using just ONE track with just Amplitube running on it. It easily takes 30 seconds after I click record or play to get things going and even then it gets really annoyng since most times once I start to record I'll still get a "CPU Power running low, increase CPU usuage blah blah blah:" even though I'm already at 85%, and H/W buffer set to it's highest. I tried even lowering CPU usage to between 50-75% just to see if that was the problem, yet the latency remains the same.

I'm disabled my Dashboard, Spotlight, and done all required changes that Digidesign recommends in their test page. I also tried creating a new user (admin account) yet to no avail.

I also lowered the alotted time to record to 10 minutes in the prefferances menu.

I've tried pretty much everything I could search for, but I'm at the point where help would be welcomed. I'm sure that using my main Hard drive as my audio drive has a lot to do with it, but I need to be sure thats not the whole problem.

I'm sorry for sounding like a newby, but I'm dieing to get this latency to a manageable level so I can record a few tracks care free.

Any advice would be amazing!

-P.J.

Re: Major Latency issues. Tried everything but finally need help
 

Right off the bat you need more memory, 512 just doesn't cut it with PT and the Mbox mini using USB is a big part of your Latency problem, I have an Mbox Mini as well and found the same problems with a Mac G5 PPC with 1.5Gig memory, I played with it for a couple of months ( bringing in projects from my Roland VS 2480 )and finally I bought a 003Rack and no more Latency problems but I also record with Low Latencey Monitoring switched on, Big difference from USB 1.0 to Firewire.
I think if they made the Mbox Mini with at least USB 2.0 there would be less Latencey problems but they didn't.
All will be well when you get a 003, I hardly if ever use my Rolands anymore, It's now just a big control surface.

Re: Major Latency issues. Tried everything but finally need help
 

You also need a firewire drive for recording and playback of audio from Pro Tools. Using the internal hard drive will almost assuredly be problematic.

As for latency - the Mbox 2 Mini has hardware monitoring, so just mute the track you're recording to and use the Mix knob to vary the mix between your input and playback from Pro Tools.

One last thing - have you tried all the steps in the OS X Setup and General Troubleshooting thread yet?

Re: Major Latency issues. Tried everything but finally need help
 

I have a mac g5 with 2gb ram 500gb hd. iam using protools 8 and mbox 2 pro firewire. i have gotten the latencey pretty low now but i still have a little bit coming thru when i record.. how the heck can i get rid of it all together.. Help!! or what interface can i buy that will be zero latencey and possibly have a nice preamp built in...