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Old 08-08-2022, 01:08 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is online now
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: USA
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Default Re: Put Your Money Where Your Mix Is - Extra RAM?

As Eric is saying, slight slowness in a UI might be memory related but any true audio latency is cause by internal buffering and if the system is too slow to keep up with those buffers then Pro Tools will crash with a CPU error. So typical latencies you are experiencing comes though the IO Buffer, any latencies in plugins, VI plugins etc. You really should have an understanding of latencies you are experiencing, what the latency from the IO buffer is, the claimed latency for any plugins you are using, and it often helps to measure the latency (or what parts you can) and make sure that matches what you expect. And once you understand that you can answer your own question about Carbon, Carbon with AAX DSP processing cannot directly help any latencies in the MIDI to VI chain... at least not with sample based VIs which don't run as AAX DSP.

You are talking about delay during playback. I'm not clear what you are talking about, you should not be receiving any *playback* delay/latency (as opposed to audio or MIDI tracking monitoring latency) not if delay comp is enabled.

Adding memory only really affects latency in that if you are low on memory and having CPU errors because of that and have to run at larger IO buffer sizes and adding memory allows you to run at lower IO Buffer sizes... but that's a somewhat indirect relationship.

As for memory yes you look at Activity Monitor to see if you are low on memory, *but* you need to look at the right thing. Much of the memory stats do not mean what people expect. The single best stat to look at is the "memory pressure" chart in the Activity Monitor memory page. If that is chart climbs up into the red or is persistently amber you may have a problem.

And if that is happening make sure other programs are not running, including things like bloated web browsers, check the Pro Tools disk cache is not set to a large value (if you have enough memory the disk cache should be set large enough to fully cache your sessions) and that VI sample based plugins are not set to use large caches (hopefully nowadays more VI plugins can stream samples). Reboot the mac, start pro tools again and watch if it is working OK and then over time if memory pressure keeps increasing (here "memory used" also can be helpful, but don't go to that first to see if there are problems). And memory is a low cost if it is needed, but adding memory is not a direct cure for audio latency.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 08-08-2022 at 01:21 PM.
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