What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

Hi,

I was having trouble with delay compensation when using RTAS and TDM plugins on the same track. So I looked up my problem here at the DUC. Someone wrote to first use RTAS plugins before the TDM plugins. I tried that and it worked!

So, what were the advantages of TDM plugins again? I thought low latency was one of them. I guess not... Why did I pay so much money for them and of course also for the Accel cards???

Thanks,

Niels

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

It's no the plug-ins, it's the going from the TDM domain to the CPU domain then back to the TDM domain. The audio has to sit in the buffer each way and if you have high buffer settings the buffers kill you
try it again with a low buffer setting

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

Ok, thanks Craig, I'll try that. What are the cons of a low buffer setting?

But still, what were the advantages of the TDM plugins?

And also, the mixer is TDM, right? so you go to the TDM domain anyway...

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

If you are 100% TDM then there is no native buffer whatsoever, lowest latency possible. As soon as you instantiate your first native plugin, then the native buffer adds up. To make things worse, you can mi and match TDM plug after RTAs plug, followed by a TDM plug and then RTAS plug, etc.

As said, DSP and native are two different domains and tou should not jump between each other but instead try to stay in one or the other.

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

Thanks JFreak!

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

it's a long history lesson going back to the early 90s, think about the power of computers back then (or lack there of)

Also what RTAS stands for Real Time Audio Suite, before LE the only options were TDM or straight Audio Suite processing

in short TDM has a fixed predictable performance
using RTAS is a bit unpredictable and performance is dependiton on the system it is running on (CPU, RAM, other processes that are running) and overal a bit buggy from the word go

yes the mixer is TDM (TDM is a bad name it stands for Time Divisional Multiplexing, the dame method used in MADI lines and phone trunk lines, yes the system uses TDM but DSP would be a better description)

lower buffer setting might give you a can't get audio fast enough error or occasional glitch. again it depends on the system

Re: What was the advantage of TDM again?
 

Thanks again Craig!