best driver for Avid mbox 3/ latency

[Mjhann]

Hi, i'm going back to using my (presumably quite dated) avid mbox 3 (windows 10)
is there a best particular driver you would recommend me try to reduce latency? or does anyone have any general tips to reduce latency please?
currently it's at 25.2 ms with a buffer size of 512 samples/sample rate 48000 using the ASIO driver, would be nice to get it around 10ms if i can.. Thanks in advance

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3601 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

[Darryl Ramm]

Hi welcome to DuC.

Use the latest supported driver you can. https://avidtech.my.salesforce-sites...d/Mbox-Drivers Yes these drivers can actually run on more recent OS versions than officially supported, but this is the official support list for these old boxes.

The practical control on latency you have is the hardware buffer size and avoiding tracking with plugins with high internal latency. And how small you can set the hardware buffer depends critically on the performance and correct setup and optimization of your computer, and might require you to use workflows that include printing, freezing or committing tracks with heavy plugin use.

If you are getting CPU errors below 512 sample buffer sizes when trying to track then you likely are doing something wrong, don’t have a properly optimized system or running into a problem in plugins or Pro Tools (but not the driver) and you need to troubleshoot all this. Start by reading the optimization and troubleshooting I fo under “help us help you” up the top of each DUC web page.

[Mjhann]

Thanks Darryl, that was super helpful :)

[albee1952]

Ditto to what Darryl said. FWIW, I have never had any latency problems with a 64 buffer and keeping high-latency plugins inactive(not in bypass, but right-click and Make Inactive) I have doubts that there is a significant difference in latency between Avid driver versions(its usually about OS compatibility). My last quad-core PC was slightly slower than your 3.6GHz and I often tracked 30 or more audio tracks, so I suspect you missed some system tweaks as Darryl suggested. You also don't mention how much RAM you have, so if its less than 32GB, that might be worthwhile upgrade(just make sure ALL RAM sticks are perfectly matched for brand/model/size).

[Mjhann]

Thanks both, appreciate the knowledge.. yeah my ram is 16gb, checked online and found out my motherboard is upgradable to 64gb which may seem over kill for making simple boom bap hip hop but it i do use a fair amount of plugins, found a couple of sources online to tweak windows 10 settings to optimise the performance :)