Re: [chuck-users] chuck for live performance - latency
Great responses, all very encouraging and exciting! So I installed chuck on
my Windows desktop in the form of MiniAudicle and have been running the
examples.
All seems good apart from one issue which I had a feeling would crop up,
latency. The lowest I can set the buffer size to with it still working is
64. I have a Saffire LE sound card which should be pretty good but the
latency in Chuck is too great for it to be useful in a live context.
So I have a few more questions:
- Should I be using Linux? Is the latency better in Linux then in
Windows? If so what flavour of Linux would people recommend.
- Should I be trying to build chuck for ASIO, I have seen some builds for
this in the forums, but not for the latest version.
- Are there any other tips or tricks for reducing the latency?
Thanks again for all your help.
Jacob
On 18 May 2010 09:19, Jacob Doran
Hey Chuck Users,
I'm a computer programmer, guitarist and singer who lives in London. Recently I have moved away from pure acoustic performances and have been using boss loop pedal and effects in gigs which has been fantastic but I'm already finding limitations.
Then I had the idea that I might be able merge my programming skills with my music and program my own loop pedal rig using ChuCK software and a midi foot controller. It would be able to loop my guitar and voice multiple times live (like traditional loop pedals), turn loops on and off, and also apply real time manipulation, ping pong delays, pitch shifting, algorithmic harmonizations and who knows what else. I would control this all with a midi foot controller and a laptop while I play and sing.
I was wondering if anyone has tried doing this type of thing before? A lot of what I have read seams to be more about virtual synthesis rather than real time audio manipulation/looping in a live performance? Is this something ChuCK could do well? What about performance, stability, or latency?
I'm going to download ChuCK and play around to try and find these answers myself soon but any useful pointers and suggestions would be most appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your help, Jacob http://myspace.com/jacobdoran/
Jacob; All seems good apart from one issue which I had a feeling would crop up,
latency. The lowest I can set the buffer size to with it still working is 64. I have a Saffire LE sound card which should be pretty good but the latency in Chuck is too great for it to be useful in a live context.
Yes, the plain Windows sounddrivers are terrible
So I have a few more questions:
- Should I be using Linux? Is the latency better in Linux then in Windows? If so what flavour of Linux would people recommend.
Alsa/Jack latency should be better than the plain Windows one, yes. Sadly the Linux version of the mini isn't without issues as the keyboard shortcuts tend to stop working, likely due to some issue with something in the Gnome toolkit getting updated/changed. Whether you should run Linux would depend primarily on your own preferences. Compiling ChucK is quite easy under Linux if you are comfortable with getting libraries and so on. Right now I'd suggest Pure:dyne which is based on Ubuntu but with tweaks specific for playing around with media/arty stuff
- Should I be trying to build chuck for ASIO, I have seen some builds for this in the forums, but not for the latest version.
We could really use a new build for ASIO, yes. This should be fairly easy for the people who did that before and figured out some of the possible pitfalls. Perhaps there is a brave volunteer? I'd very much appreciate that too.
- Are there any other tips or tricks for reducing the latency?
I think you already touched the main ones. Asio (or Jack with a rt kernel on Linux) matters a *lot*, a good soundcard matters, lower buffer settings matter. It also pays to consider that with lower latencies the system will have less leeway to deal with sudden spikes in cpu usage so disabling any and all non-needed processes will help prevent those. Some people go as far as setting up a separate computer (or user) without internet access for that purpose (as firewalls and the like will conflict with those needs). There are good sites online specialising in tips, especially XP is well covered. You can go very far in this, I'd personally try how far you can get with relatively simple tweaks and see whether you still have issues after those before you hose a whole OS in the name of gaining a few cycles. I still feel ChucK should upgrade to a new version of our audio library and start supporting Asio in the default distribution as it matters so much and the features are there in the newer version of rtaudio. The rtaudio library is even maintained by a list-member so all of the resources (except for time...) are there already. Thanks again for all your help.
No problem; this'll be a nice project. Yours, Kas.
participants (2)
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Jacob Doran -
Kassen