pt 6, soft synths and latency

[nan_wpg_mb]

To all of you using reason, and sampletank rtas, how is the latency?
Can you play the softsynths in real time with no noticeable delay or is it not that good?
What kind of latency specs are you getting?
Are they the same as the hardware settings?

[Bastiaan]

I think Reason has the lowest latency. When you play abck a miditrack to both Sampletank and Reason you'll hear the Reasontracks first....

I dont know yet how it is when you actually play something.

[nan_wpg_mb]

The reason I am asking is that the higher end soundcards for cubase have some well written asio2 drivers that allow exremely low latency for softsynths.
This is not the same as monitoring latency.
Since I cannot decide if I want to use cubase or pt (kinda leaning towards cubase), and considering a decent soundcard will run me about 700-1000 USD (roughly the cost of a 001/002r) I was thinking about going with a 001 or 002r. That way I can use pt or cubase with the asio drivers digi has provided.
After playing with cubase and the huge vst instruments available I realize that too much of something can be a bad thing.
I would be happy enough with reason and sampletank as "vsti's" in the rtas format.
I have read in the DUC for a long time about how great pt is for audio and editing.
Very little is said about it's virtual instruments performance, only a few scatered posts that dont really say a lot.
I know that the soft synths are a new thing to pc pt'ers but sampletank has been out long enough for a lot of people to use it.
Are the digi asio drivers good? Can you hear the softsynths as you play them with a tolerable or no delay?
If you are or have been a cubase sx user and pt user how would you compare the softsynth latency?
I dont want to start a war, both platforms are good at what they do, as they both improve bit by bit at what they arent as good at.
Kinda like cars, they all get you from a to b but in different colors, styles, etc.
Just as I dont want to get locked into the digi hardware, I dont want to lock myself into the cubase platform. Digi hardware with the asio driver will allow me to do both.
I suspect that the digi hardware will do just fine with cubase. Any problems are usually human related.
Right now I am running cubase sl, with a lousy soundblaster 128 pci card. No mics. I just play with reason a bit along with some online excersise files so I can learn the software real good.
The card works great for what I doing right now but it is time to get a little more serious about things.
If my SB card is doing fine then even if the digi hardware is the worst choice for cubase right now it will still be better than what I am using right now in terms of soft synth latency.

Sorry to carry on and on.
Thanks

[tele_player]

When I play Reason with my MIDI keyboard, either using Pro Tools/ReWire or ASIO, the latency is very low, there's no noticeable delay. I use a Digi 002.

[Shan]

latency for me is 2ms or 128 samples. Better than any of my hardware synths. They are around 10 to 15ms or so.

Shan

[tele_player]

shan, how are you measuring the latency? or are you just calculating it based on buffer size and sample rate? are you alowing for the time it takes to get the MIDI message from the keyboard into PTLE or Reason ?

[nan_wpg_mb]

That kind of latency seems awfull fast.
Over in cubase land the average is about 7 ms for softsynths.

[Bastiaan]

Using reason with the digidesign asio-drivers i can run at 128 samples latency. Yes...it is very very fast. Its like the song is playing befpore you actually pressed the button. The latency is the same towards reason/rewire/ptle. Very fast indeed.

[tele_player]

yes, it's fast. But, depending on how they're derived, the exact numbers are suspect.

[nan_wpg_mb]

Bastiaan, are you using the 001 or 002 with the asio drivers?
I guess they are not as bad as people are saying they are.
Have you used sampletank rtas with pt? Is the latency comparable to the asio latency?