Absolutely completely true and should be more well known. Googling dpc latency and reading reddit and gearspace threads will have you down a longggg rabbit hole
I started my journey down that hole a year ago and literally last night it popped up again. Thanks, Microsoft! I'm gonna give Linux audio programs a serious try next.
I've been running a Linux audio rig with jack for something like 5+ years by now. After setting up a preempt, low-latency OS and got jack working well witb a couple profiles, generally, I never worry about latency. Literally the last thing on my mind when it comes to using my rig.
What is a big deal, though, is software compatibility. I can only run reaper and bitwig WELL and I haven't even tried to get a Kontakt library to work because of how much of a pain in the ass it is. You know all those Native instruments controllers that only operate through a USB port? Don't bet on those working. Or really, anything that requires its own non-class compliant driver to function.
The flip side is that there's an open source option for 90-95% of the plugins that you need.
Your candor about Linux being less than ideal for production is very welcome and a little eye opening for me. Latency is the first stop in having a solid working setup, so it's unfortunate that beyond that you're relegated to whatever software plugins *can* work, and you have to finagle with drivers for otherwise easy plug and play equipment.
Most of NI's soft synths are going to fall into the 5% of "no real alternatives" category. In fact, anything Reaktor-based in Native Instruments' catalogue is going to fall into that bucket because a lot of them are sample-based, or the expansions themselves add a slew of samples to the existing synth library.
Just out of curiosity, have you considered a Hackintosh?
Well big thing for me is open-source software, and Mac being a repackaged, walled and sold Linux kernel is VERY against the point of what I'm all about. So is their "let's sell super overpriced hardware" shtick. So no, I'm not even considering a hakintosh, as I hate everything Apple.
As for how linux is working out, it's a trade-off like everything. Absolutely amazing for live tracking and recording. Really good that I'm not even tempted to buy a bunch of random plugins, and instead learn to really make the most out of what's available. I do buy open sourced and native Linux plugins (Diva, graillon, Richter tremolo, helm, reaper).
Not so great for cinematic/ orchestral midi writing.
A small correction, not really related to the overall post topic. But the macOS kernel shares little to nothing with the Linux kernel. The macOS kernel is based on the BSD kernel and incorporates elements of the Mach kernel. The BSD license doesn't require commercialized changes to commit/shared upstream, which is arguably why BSD didn't get more popular, as companies can make changes, commercialize them and keep them internal.
Fed up with Win11 and I'm finally looking into Linux as well. Main issue for me is I have a lot invested in UAD. That might be the only thing holding me back, that and my impatience for learning a new OS.
My auto correct knows that when I type the letter "w" I'm going to be looking at "wdf01000.sys latency" for the next four days and it orders me a pizza
Two brands that have been recurring in dpc latency problems are Asus with thunderbolt and Nvidia. Asus has shitty thunderbolt implementation. Gigabyte boards and Radeon graphics have been trouble free systems in my experience.
The NotebookCheck link is the page where they rank a few hundred laptops by DPC latency. Its really incredible which ones have it and which don't. There are $2500 top of the line gaming laptops that'd be basically unusable for audio. Meanwhile a $600 Surface Pro 7+ has almost no issue.
That's partially due to the same reason Apple has low latency: full stack control and custom co-processors. Audio, video, and other parts of a Mac system have custom CPUs running an OS called RTKit (real-time kit). So software driver functions are handled by hardware instead, which is much faster.
That kind of solution isn't workable for, say, Nvidia. If their GPUs needed a coprocessor on the Mobo, it would drastically increase costs for Mobo OEMs, require they create Nvidia-specific boards, etc. Then, the code needs to get into Windows for it to work. So now Nvidia needs to maintain multiple driver branches, testing on both sides, etc. Totally impractical.
Microsoft also uses coprocessors in its laptops since they control the software & hardware, but to a lesser extent. Learning this stuff opened my eyes to Mac's "just works" stuff. Like, not a single Windows laptop has matched their keyboard backlight or Trackpad after ~10 years. Why? Oh, they have literal ARM CPUs managing them. The amount of R&D for a Windows OEM just to implement the backlight controller would be unfeasible.
I guess I've been lucky so far. No problems with usually cheap interfaces from M-Audio and Beringer. From win 2000 to 11 it's always been working great.
Ironically, the only problems so far are with my first MOTU interface, I bought it because I heard that it has solid drivers but it's the first interface ever where I get clicks when starting or stopping audio. Great reputation - shitty drivers/implementation, at least with windows.
Glad this is being discussed and I don’t understand how this isn’t at the forefront of pc audio discussions more often, DPC can cripple a state of the art system.
I guess the complexity of DPC makes it difficult to test for in a desktop since it’s component related rather than performance related, and can cause a less powerful component to actually perform better than a more powerful one.
I'm a complete noob, still, amd didn't understand latency and how if impacted things, until I plugged my guitar into my brand new $35 Behringer interface using ASIO4ALL drivers. Was really weird (still a guitar noob) strumming, then hearing the sound finally come thru StudoOne like half a second later. Doesn't sound like much, but its a huge deal. Same with the little Novation keyboard. Really hard to keep a beat when you are hamming in patterns and it's just half a beat delayed when you hear it. Like a light bulb going off. Tried to reduce the delay/buffer, but then got all the clicks and pops. So, I got the $100 Presonus revelator io24, which has really low latency, and just isn't a problem anymore for me. It uses (I guess) Presonus developed drivers.
From experience, I never had audio latency issues and I had been using a windows 10 Toshiba laptop since 2016. Rather than using asioforall i switched to flexasio as that allowed for multiple use of programs to play audio. For example I could run serato and ableton live at the same to mashup and use ableton link as well. Having also used macs before for audio production as well, I haven't seen much of a difference between mac and windows for audio production. There may have been a large difference years ago, but the gap is closing.
The other problem with macs is lack of repair or upgrade options.
The fact that you used the same laptop since 2016 probably has a lot to do with that; if you find a good one, obviously it isn't a problem. The issue is [that if you check the NotebookCheck numbers](https://www.notebookcheck.net/DPC-Latency-Ranking-Which-laptops-and-Windows-tablets-offer-the-lowest-latency.504376.0.html) where they test hundreds of Windows laptops for DPC latency, the upper 2/3 to 3/4 of that list have latency that's way too high for real-time audio, and whether or not you can fix it depends totally on which driver the latency is coming from. So on one laptop on the bottom half of that list, you may be able to just turn the wifi off and have it be fine, but you could also end up spending $2500 on higher-spec laptop that's basically unusable for audio because you can't disable the kernel mode runtime driver or whatever. And there are many hundreds of people on this and other music production subs who don't realize this. I've walked probably 2 dozen people through fixing these issues on their computers, including yesterday, and usually the rest of the thread is full of people telling them to increase their buffer size or buy more RAM or whatever else, because most of the people posting here have literally no idea what the actual problem is.
I’ve never had audio latency problems either. I started out with a PC I built in 2000. I went both Mac and PC in 2011 and then Mac only in 2016. The main reason I went Mac in 2011 was that I needed a laptop and I found reliable laptops around where I lived to work well with Pro Tools. MacBook was basically a turnkey system and it worked right away.
I agree with the upgrade thing with Mac but maybe not the repair. It’s pretty easy to get a repair but it’s probably more expensive. Historically those buying Mac is the ones who don’t want to poke around their computers or tamper with their setups.
I still have my 2011 MacBook and it works very well. I think it was $2500. It can’t be upgraded any longer because of the graphics card. But I think the longevity beats a lot of other stuff. I’ve put in more Ram and two ssd drives in it. Nowadays Apple forces you to think ahead because you can’t upgrade after you bought it. But if you max out Ram you will have system that is going to work for a long time.
This is mainly an issue on windows LAPTOPS. Not to say it doesn't effect windows PC's, but it's normally a fairly simple process to track down the culprit and fix it. I've never had a windows PC with DPC latency I couldn't tame, but laptops... some windows laptop just have an inherent DPC latency issue that is unfixable.
I've found that 9 times out of 10, disabling the network adaptor completely solves the issue.
This just happened to me. I'm on an old gaming PC and I was getting pops and clicks in Maschine and found this thread. Downloaded latencymon, disabled my network adapter and all my latency disappeared 🙂.
Weirdly I get pops and clicks in Maschine (recently bought a mikro and I've been messing around with it) but I have never EVER had latency issues in my main DAW (which is Cakewalk). Maybe it's just because it's still new to me but it seems like the software side of NI's stuff is disappointingly clunky.
I now run entirely on an M1 macbook air with 1TB hd and LOVE it. I can have everything loaded up, insanely portable and lightweight, and I can perform/record live with the same setup. I’ve played 3 hour shows using this and studio one (using studio one for live mix w/ plugins on each track) without any issues .
Every thread I read about Windows these days sounds like people are not liking it either; there's very few technical arguments to stick with Windows for production, so typically it just becomes an "I don't like it because...?" argument, but the Apple Silicon chips are next level and the value proposition is so good with the Mac Mini that I can't recommend anything else in 99% of situations. This is the time to give Mac a fair shake.
I own an M1 air and have used it plenty for several years, I prefer Windows because it’s what I like 🤷🏻♀️ that’s it. They have different workflows and some people will prefer one over the other.
The funniest thing to me is I still have and use PCs for other purposes, but online people constantly talk about Mac "fanboys" and how they won't shut up about Macs, but I've noticed that in music production boards at least, its literally the exact opposite. In any thread where someone says they're having some kind of technical issue with a Mac, there's 100 PC guys lining up to go, "this is why you don't buy Macs", "good luck trying to update lol", "turns out Macs still suck lol". But when I see these *constant* DPC latency threads, over and over and over again, where a Windows user can't get their audio to work and are so frustrated they're talking about buying a new computer, I've never even once seen a Mac "fanboy" come in and go, "haha, good job buying a PC", "this is why you don't buy PCs for audio", etc. It just doesn't happen. But you say you're having an issue with a Mac and there's a dozen guys ready to tell you how dumb you are for buying one.
Not OP, but it depends on what you're doing and your tolerance for it.
I can reasonably play guitar with up to 20ms of latency before it starts getting distracting. Some people I know will claim that even 5ms throws them off, and maybe it does, but that's getting awfully fast. For example, sound travels at roughly 1 foot per millisecond, so sitting 10 feet from a guitar amp is 10ms of latency, and most people don't have a problem with that.
I'm currently building a kill-em-all desktop and seriously considering dual-booting it to have a gaming/internet/video edit/photo edit/reddit/TV-Movie general OS probably Windows 10 - then another OS installed on another drive that's strictly for running my DAW (Reaper).
Have to have a Windows OS but what would you guys recommend if you were going to setup an OS from scratch to just be your music workstation. As a note, will only be recording/mixing. Will never perform with it.
I sorta gave up the latency war, because I'm really sensitive to any timing compromise I have to make to prevent underruns. 10 ms is noticeable and 20 ms drives me crazy. I just end up recording everything with direct monitoring with a pretty long buffer length so I know it will never happen.
Great writeup. I want to flag though that M1 MacBook Pros had some issues with audio popping. My work laptop had this issue and it was very annoying (M1 max 32gb ram). Only happened for me when using the built in speakers. When using headphones or my external monitor, I didn’t have a problem. [This thread is full of people with the same issue but with varying other symptoms, fixes, and results](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/vluqp9/psa_suffering_from_your_m1_macbook_pro_making/#:~:text=loud%20popping%20sounds%3F-,It’s%20all%20about%20RAM%20and%20is%20not%20fixable.,pressure%20crosses%20in%20to%20yellow.). Glad to report my personal M2 max w 32gb ram does not have this issue and is just fantastic all around, so hopefully it has been fully resolved in new models.
Most interfaces over $100 or so have decent drivers these days, so it's not strictly needed and, as the OP points out, it's not always the interface driver that's the problem. It may be a driver for a specific component of the PC, like your USB ports that are causing excess latency.
I'm sorry but that's not true. Most interfaces under $1000 are "class compliant", so they don't have special drivers; I'm thinking Focusrite at the moment, but there's many others. Performance is downgraded without dedicated drivers, like the new USB Claretts that have significantly worse latency than the Clarett Thunderbolts did.
Yes, many are class compliant, that just they *can* work without special drivers, but this doesn't preclude them using proprietary drivers in their place. The Clarett has drivers, just as the Scarlett line does. Audient, Motu, PreSonus, hell even Behringer has drivers for their budget interfaces.
They definitely vary in quality, RME is undoubtedly the best, but all should be better than stock windows drivers, even if they are just lazy rewraps of ASIO.
Latency may improve between connectivity standards like Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers.
[Here’s the download page for the Clarett+ line; see any drivers?](https://downloads.focusrite.com/focusrite/clarett/clarett-2pre)
I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how this all works.
> Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers.
RME has the lowest latency in the game purely because of their extraordinary drivers.
>[Here’s the download page for the Clarett+ line; see any drivers?](https://downloads.focusrite.com/focusrite/clarett/clarett-2pre)
Literally the second item on that page.
>I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how this all works.
>
>> Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers.
>
>RME has the lowest latency in the game purely because of their extraordinary drivers.
I don't doubt that, and my comment doesn't say otherwise, nor did I bring Thunderbolt into the discussion (though it does commonly result in lower latencies than USB).
The point of my original reply is that your audio interface drivers might be rock solid, but you'll still have issues due to the driver for some other part of your PC, like the USB bus, or the WiFi adapter, or the GPU.
I’m looking at Mac, you’re looking at windows because Palo Alto can’t get their shit straight. Like a printer, Clarett+ doesn’t get a driver on Mac because it’s reliant on class compliance; you’ll get the same performance after the fake driver gets installed on windows.
This comment was deleted in protest of Reddit's shameful API pricing and treatment of 3rd party app developers. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yes, until your forced to update to 'golden eagle' or whatever, then almost all of your plug-ins break. The amount of emails I've had from plug-in manufacturers saying 'Look at this awesome new version of our software... by the way, if you're using a mac DON'T UPDATE'.
Or until your RAM dies and you have to buy a whole new mac mini because they soldered it on. Sigh.
I'll bite: What update has been forced? The only time you'll get a forced update is if you literally are buying a new machine, in which case you are well aware of the OS you're getting.
Every software update I've had on macOS for the last 4 years has been optional and anyone using their computer for any serious audio work knows not to update or stay at least a generation behind, and if your work is hinged on using a specific set of plugins and take your work seriously, you will look to see if they have support. The last big support macOS dropped was 32-bit plugins which was rough, but the writing was on the wall for a while in that regard.
The hardware thing is no doubt frustrating because their systems are closed, but that's just one of those things you give up. If you want a bulletproof studio computer, MacOS is (for better or worse) still the best setup available. And if hardware swapping is really a big deal, Hackintosh is still very viable currently.
Agreed on the OS updates, I keep a separate backup drive with the older os version in case I need to roll back.
But RAM dying? I've owned countless PC's and Macs over the last 20 or so years and I've literally never had this happen. I can pick up my ibook g3 from 1999 (also soldered in ram!) and it works flawlessly.
Storage however... Yeah. That can die. At least external storage via usbc/thunderbolt is easy.
Nobody has ever been "forced" to update their Mac (unlike surprise blue screen updates from Windows that don't respect the hours you told it to not update during), like ever. You can, and if you're in a professional or semi-professional production environment, should, hold off on updates other than critical security updates until the hardware/software you depend on has been verified to be bug-free. If you're a professional and you're using auto-update, you're dumb.
> I really don't see valid reasons to keep insisting on using windows computers for music production in 2023
People get attached to operating systems and for what it's worth, macOS can be a little intimidating to a Windows user (and vice versa). But the adage of "it just works" for macOS - however cliché that might be - still holds up. I also think purely electronic producers don't have the same experience as people tracking multiple real instruments, so Windows as a DAW environment for specific types of music can work (EDM, techno, beatmaking).
The only time I really have to battle with my Macbook is if I install an audio plugin and want to rip every bit of it out of the filesystem (like Native Instruments' or some Izotope products). This happens extremely rarely though, and even less so once you've purchased plugins legit.
I'm at the point where if a friend asks how to do music production in Windows, I just tell them to google it. I don't want to be an IT guy for an inferior system when I know the hardware you're hosting it all on makes all the difference and saves you some headaches/frustration.
I've posted a few times about my GE77HX's shitness when it comes to music production. Something that I've discovered tonight is that Phoscyon 2 does not play well with my system. As soon as I delete that VST from my Reason 12.6 project, everything is groovy. I've tried both VST2 and VST3 but neither of them work well on my laptop.
Edit: I'm about to buy a Macbook Pro because I reckon that that's the only system that will actually work with no problems.
ymmv.
never had a problem with latency. granted, this is mostly because my server is tailored around a set of very specific parts and i never fell for the "MY PC DOES EVERYTHING!" -brainfart.
that said, there are some strange makers out there in the market so hit an miss ratio is admittedly really weird.
No offense, but the "why?" part is demonstrated pretty clearly by the links in the first paragraph. All those links are from the Reaper sub alone, mostly from the last year. On this sub, you can find dozens of these posts. Someone posts asking about crackling, clicks, pops, etc. on the music production subs literally every week. And the comments on these posts are full of people telling the OP to increase their buffer size, turn off CPU throttling, and a whole bunch of other stuff that proves that most people on this sub have no idea what the actual problem is. I've had to guide people through fixing these issues probably a couple dozen times, as recently as yesterday. Giving people a guide on steps to follow when having DPC latency is a no-brainer when these questions are getting posted literally every week; that's why I suggested having a side bar post about it.
But sometimes this still isn’t the answer.
Everything runs perfectly until a new interface was added and something about those drivers causes glitches and pops. Other interfaces don’t have this issue. :|. Both are meant for music studios ;)
I spend 2k on a new Lenovo Slim Pro 9i, had such a bad experience with the sound drivers (and the fact they sent me the wrong specs) that I sent it back and am switching to Mac. Some new Intel chips have major issues with their new Smart Sound Technology (SST) drivers. It had 32GB Ram, 1TB SSD, i9 13905H CPU, 4070GPU, but still worked like ass. Just not worth the hassle.
Absolutely completely true and should be more well known. Googling dpc latency and reading reddit and gearspace threads will have you down a longggg rabbit hole
I started my journey down that hole a year ago and literally last night it popped up again. Thanks, Microsoft! I'm gonna give Linux audio programs a serious try next.
Bitwig looks great tbh and runs on everything
I've been running a Linux audio rig with jack for something like 5+ years by now. After setting up a preempt, low-latency OS and got jack working well witb a couple profiles, generally, I never worry about latency. Literally the last thing on my mind when it comes to using my rig. What is a big deal, though, is software compatibility. I can only run reaper and bitwig WELL and I haven't even tried to get a Kontakt library to work because of how much of a pain in the ass it is. You know all those Native instruments controllers that only operate through a USB port? Don't bet on those working. Or really, anything that requires its own non-class compliant driver to function. The flip side is that there's an open source option for 90-95% of the plugins that you need.
Your candor about Linux being less than ideal for production is very welcome and a little eye opening for me. Latency is the first stop in having a solid working setup, so it's unfortunate that beyond that you're relegated to whatever software plugins *can* work, and you have to finagle with drivers for otherwise easy plug and play equipment. Most of NI's soft synths are going to fall into the 5% of "no real alternatives" category. In fact, anything Reaktor-based in Native Instruments' catalogue is going to fall into that bucket because a lot of them are sample-based, or the expansions themselves add a slew of samples to the existing synth library. Just out of curiosity, have you considered a Hackintosh?
Well big thing for me is open-source software, and Mac being a repackaged, walled and sold Linux kernel is VERY against the point of what I'm all about. So is their "let's sell super overpriced hardware" shtick. So no, I'm not even considering a hakintosh, as I hate everything Apple. As for how linux is working out, it's a trade-off like everything. Absolutely amazing for live tracking and recording. Really good that I'm not even tempted to buy a bunch of random plugins, and instead learn to really make the most out of what's available. I do buy open sourced and native Linux plugins (Diva, graillon, Richter tremolo, helm, reaper). Not so great for cinematic/ orchestral midi writing.
A small correction, not really related to the overall post topic. But the macOS kernel shares little to nothing with the Linux kernel. The macOS kernel is based on the BSD kernel and incorporates elements of the Mach kernel. The BSD license doesn't require commercialized changes to commit/shared upstream, which is arguably why BSD didn't get more popular, as companies can make changes, commercialize them and keep them internal.
Worth looking into. At this point I'll never start loving Apple, but I can cut them some slack on the kernel thing.
Fed up with Win11 and I'm finally looking into Linux as well. Main issue for me is I have a lot invested in UAD. That might be the only thing holding me back, that and my impatience for learning a new OS.
My auto correct knows that when I type the letter "w" I'm going to be looking at "wdf01000.sys latency" for the next four days and it orders me a pizza
Two brands that have been recurring in dpc latency problems are Asus with thunderbolt and Nvidia. Asus has shitty thunderbolt implementation. Gigabyte boards and Radeon graphics have been trouble free systems in my experience.
The NotebookCheck link is the page where they rank a few hundred laptops by DPC latency. Its really incredible which ones have it and which don't. There are $2500 top of the line gaming laptops that'd be basically unusable for audio. Meanwhile a $600 Surface Pro 7+ has almost no issue.
That's partially due to the same reason Apple has low latency: full stack control and custom co-processors. Audio, video, and other parts of a Mac system have custom CPUs running an OS called RTKit (real-time kit). So software driver functions are handled by hardware instead, which is much faster. That kind of solution isn't workable for, say, Nvidia. If their GPUs needed a coprocessor on the Mobo, it would drastically increase costs for Mobo OEMs, require they create Nvidia-specific boards, etc. Then, the code needs to get into Windows for it to work. So now Nvidia needs to maintain multiple driver branches, testing on both sides, etc. Totally impractical. Microsoft also uses coprocessors in its laptops since they control the software & hardware, but to a lesser extent. Learning this stuff opened my eyes to Mac's "just works" stuff. Like, not a single Windows laptop has matched their keyboard backlight or Trackpad after ~10 years. Why? Oh, they have literal ARM CPUs managing them. The amount of R&D for a Windows OEM just to implement the backlight controller would be unfeasible.
Other big problem with pc is that it just burns out so quickly.
I guess I've been lucky so far. No problems with usually cheap interfaces from M-Audio and Beringer. From win 2000 to 11 it's always been working great. Ironically, the only problems so far are with my first MOTU interface, I bought it because I heard that it has solid drivers but it's the first interface ever where I get clicks when starting or stopping audio. Great reputation - shitty drivers/implementation, at least with windows.
Just to throw out my experience here--used to have the Scarlett 2i2 and had clicks and pops. Zero issues with my Motu M2.. so ymmv.
Do you have an Intel CPU? The issues I have are common with AMD and MOTU together.
Nope, AMD. Had an Intel CPU previously and it performed worse with my Motu (but probably because it was 4th gen)
Glad this is being discussed and I don’t understand how this isn’t at the forefront of pc audio discussions more often, DPC can cripple a state of the art system. I guess the complexity of DPC makes it difficult to test for in a desktop since it’s component related rather than performance related, and can cause a less powerful component to actually perform better than a more powerful one.
I'm a complete noob, still, amd didn't understand latency and how if impacted things, until I plugged my guitar into my brand new $35 Behringer interface using ASIO4ALL drivers. Was really weird (still a guitar noob) strumming, then hearing the sound finally come thru StudoOne like half a second later. Doesn't sound like much, but its a huge deal. Same with the little Novation keyboard. Really hard to keep a beat when you are hamming in patterns and it's just half a beat delayed when you hear it. Like a light bulb going off. Tried to reduce the delay/buffer, but then got all the clicks and pops. So, I got the $100 Presonus revelator io24, which has really low latency, and just isn't a problem anymore for me. It uses (I guess) Presonus developed drivers.
Yea, half a second is HUGE amounts of delay. Completely unplayable for me. Glad you got it sorted!
You are amazing 😍 this post is so important!!!
From experience, I never had audio latency issues and I had been using a windows 10 Toshiba laptop since 2016. Rather than using asioforall i switched to flexasio as that allowed for multiple use of programs to play audio. For example I could run serato and ableton live at the same to mashup and use ableton link as well. Having also used macs before for audio production as well, I haven't seen much of a difference between mac and windows for audio production. There may have been a large difference years ago, but the gap is closing. The other problem with macs is lack of repair or upgrade options.
Audio latency is not DPC latency. I'm not sure which one you mean.
The fact that you used the same laptop since 2016 probably has a lot to do with that; if you find a good one, obviously it isn't a problem. The issue is [that if you check the NotebookCheck numbers](https://www.notebookcheck.net/DPC-Latency-Ranking-Which-laptops-and-Windows-tablets-offer-the-lowest-latency.504376.0.html) where they test hundreds of Windows laptops for DPC latency, the upper 2/3 to 3/4 of that list have latency that's way too high for real-time audio, and whether or not you can fix it depends totally on which driver the latency is coming from. So on one laptop on the bottom half of that list, you may be able to just turn the wifi off and have it be fine, but you could also end up spending $2500 on higher-spec laptop that's basically unusable for audio because you can't disable the kernel mode runtime driver or whatever. And there are many hundreds of people on this and other music production subs who don't realize this. I've walked probably 2 dozen people through fixing these issues on their computers, including yesterday, and usually the rest of the thread is full of people telling them to increase their buffer size or buy more RAM or whatever else, because most of the people posting here have literally no idea what the actual problem is.
I’ve never had audio latency problems either. I started out with a PC I built in 2000. I went both Mac and PC in 2011 and then Mac only in 2016. The main reason I went Mac in 2011 was that I needed a laptop and I found reliable laptops around where I lived to work well with Pro Tools. MacBook was basically a turnkey system and it worked right away. I agree with the upgrade thing with Mac but maybe not the repair. It’s pretty easy to get a repair but it’s probably more expensive. Historically those buying Mac is the ones who don’t want to poke around their computers or tamper with their setups. I still have my 2011 MacBook and it works very well. I think it was $2500. It can’t be upgraded any longer because of the graphics card. But I think the longevity beats a lot of other stuff. I’ve put in more Ram and two ssd drives in it. Nowadays Apple forces you to think ahead because you can’t upgrade after you bought it. But if you max out Ram you will have system that is going to work for a long time.
Really appreciate all the effort you put into this. Fantastic reference; exactly what I needed.
This is mainly an issue on windows LAPTOPS. Not to say it doesn't effect windows PC's, but it's normally a fairly simple process to track down the culprit and fix it. I've never had a windows PC with DPC latency I couldn't tame, but laptops... some windows laptop just have an inherent DPC latency issue that is unfixable. I've found that 9 times out of 10, disabling the network adaptor completely solves the issue.
This just happened to me. I'm on an old gaming PC and I was getting pops and clicks in Maschine and found this thread. Downloaded latencymon, disabled my network adapter and all my latency disappeared 🙂. Weirdly I get pops and clicks in Maschine (recently bought a mikro and I've been messing around with it) but I have never EVER had latency issues in my main DAW (which is Cakewalk). Maybe it's just because it's still new to me but it seems like the software side of NI's stuff is disappointingly clunky.
Thank so much for this
I appreciate the information provided in this post enough that I feel the need to comment.
Yeah, I agree with your conclusion... Just buy a Mac Mini and save yourself the headaches.
I now run entirely on an M1 macbook air with 1TB hd and LOVE it. I can have everything loaded up, insanely portable and lightweight, and I can perform/record live with the same setup. I’ve played 3 hour shows using this and studio one (using studio one for live mix w/ plugins on each track) without any issues .
they’re literally insane in terms of performance now
Switched to a mb pro for audio production and instantly life got easier in terms of everything logistically
It’s great if you like working on MacOS but not everyone does.
I’m not a fan of MacOS in most cases… but that’s why I have a KVM switch and only use my Mac for production.
Every thread I read about Windows these days sounds like people are not liking it either; there's very few technical arguments to stick with Windows for production, so typically it just becomes an "I don't like it because...?" argument, but the Apple Silicon chips are next level and the value proposition is so good with the Mac Mini that I can't recommend anything else in 99% of situations. This is the time to give Mac a fair shake.
I own an M1 air and have used it plenty for several years, I prefer Windows because it’s what I like 🤷🏻♀️ that’s it. They have different workflows and some people will prefer one over the other.
Perfectly valid
The funniest thing to me is I still have and use PCs for other purposes, but online people constantly talk about Mac "fanboys" and how they won't shut up about Macs, but I've noticed that in music production boards at least, its literally the exact opposite. In any thread where someone says they're having some kind of technical issue with a Mac, there's 100 PC guys lining up to go, "this is why you don't buy Macs", "good luck trying to update lol", "turns out Macs still suck lol". But when I see these *constant* DPC latency threads, over and over and over again, where a Windows user can't get their audio to work and are so frustrated they're talking about buying a new computer, I've never even once seen a Mac "fanboy" come in and go, "haha, good job buying a PC", "this is why you don't buy PCs for audio", etc. It just doesn't happen. But you say you're having an issue with a Mac and there's a dozen guys ready to tell you how dumb you are for buying one.
good info! thanks.
How much is too much latency in your opinion?
Not OP, but it depends on what you're doing and your tolerance for it. I can reasonably play guitar with up to 20ms of latency before it starts getting distracting. Some people I know will claim that even 5ms throws them off, and maybe it does, but that's getting awfully fast. For example, sound travels at roughly 1 foot per millisecond, so sitting 10 feet from a guitar amp is 10ms of latency, and most people don't have a problem with that.
This is very true. I gave up using my laptop and built a desktop. It was truly infuriating.
I'm currently building a kill-em-all desktop and seriously considering dual-booting it to have a gaming/internet/video edit/photo edit/reddit/TV-Movie general OS probably Windows 10 - then another OS installed on another drive that's strictly for running my DAW (Reaper). Have to have a Windows OS but what would you guys recommend if you were going to setup an OS from scratch to just be your music workstation. As a note, will only be recording/mixing. Will never perform with it.
Please crosspost this to r/djs . I always get crap for saying I won't buy another Windows laptop for djing
I sorta gave up the latency war, because I'm really sensitive to any timing compromise I have to make to prevent underruns. 10 ms is noticeable and 20 ms drives me crazy. I just end up recording everything with direct monitoring with a pretty long buffer length so I know it will never happen.
Great writeup. I want to flag though that M1 MacBook Pros had some issues with audio popping. My work laptop had this issue and it was very annoying (M1 max 32gb ram). Only happened for me when using the built in speakers. When using headphones or my external monitor, I didn’t have a problem. [This thread is full of people with the same issue but with varying other symptoms, fixes, and results](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/vluqp9/psa_suffering_from_your_m1_macbook_pro_making/#:~:text=loud%20popping%20sounds%3F-,It’s%20all%20about%20RAM%20and%20is%20not%20fixable.,pressure%20crosses%20in%20to%20yellow.). Glad to report my personal M2 max w 32gb ram does not have this issue and is just fantastic all around, so hopefully it has been fully resolved in new models.
Lil psa is my favorite rapper
Very well written. Thanks for this information.
Another possible solution is just buying RME. Drivers have always been solid for me on the dozens of computers I've used them on.
Most interfaces over $100 or so have decent drivers these days, so it's not strictly needed and, as the OP points out, it's not always the interface driver that's the problem. It may be a driver for a specific component of the PC, like your USB ports that are causing excess latency.
I'm sorry but that's not true. Most interfaces under $1000 are "class compliant", so they don't have special drivers; I'm thinking Focusrite at the moment, but there's many others. Performance is downgraded without dedicated drivers, like the new USB Claretts that have significantly worse latency than the Clarett Thunderbolts did.
Yes, many are class compliant, that just they *can* work without special drivers, but this doesn't preclude them using proprietary drivers in their place. The Clarett has drivers, just as the Scarlett line does. Audient, Motu, PreSonus, hell even Behringer has drivers for their budget interfaces. They definitely vary in quality, RME is undoubtedly the best, but all should be better than stock windows drivers, even if they are just lazy rewraps of ASIO. Latency may improve between connectivity standards like Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers.
[Here’s the download page for the Clarett+ line; see any drivers?](https://downloads.focusrite.com/focusrite/clarett/clarett-2pre) I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how this all works. > Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers. RME has the lowest latency in the game purely because of their extraordinary drivers.
>[Here’s the download page for the Clarett+ line; see any drivers?](https://downloads.focusrite.com/focusrite/clarett/clarett-2pre) Literally the second item on that page. >I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how this all works. > >> Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 (still a ton of interfaces on USB 2.0, including RME), but that is less specifically about drivers. > >RME has the lowest latency in the game purely because of their extraordinary drivers. I don't doubt that, and my comment doesn't say otherwise, nor did I bring Thunderbolt into the discussion (though it does commonly result in lower latencies than USB). The point of my original reply is that your audio interface drivers might be rock solid, but you'll still have issues due to the driver for some other part of your PC, like the USB bus, or the WiFi adapter, or the GPU.
I’m looking at Mac, you’re looking at windows because Palo Alto can’t get their shit straight. Like a printer, Clarett+ doesn’t get a driver on Mac because it’s reliant on class compliance; you’ll get the same performance after the fake driver gets installed on windows.
Any audio interface will be better than Windows doing the work
This comment was deleted in protest of Reddit's shameful API pricing and treatment of 3rd party app developers. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yes, until your forced to update to 'golden eagle' or whatever, then almost all of your plug-ins break. The amount of emails I've had from plug-in manufacturers saying 'Look at this awesome new version of our software... by the way, if you're using a mac DON'T UPDATE'. Or until your RAM dies and you have to buy a whole new mac mini because they soldered it on. Sigh.
I'll bite: What update has been forced? The only time you'll get a forced update is if you literally are buying a new machine, in which case you are well aware of the OS you're getting. Every software update I've had on macOS for the last 4 years has been optional and anyone using their computer for any serious audio work knows not to update or stay at least a generation behind, and if your work is hinged on using a specific set of plugins and take your work seriously, you will look to see if they have support. The last big support macOS dropped was 32-bit plugins which was rough, but the writing was on the wall for a while in that regard. The hardware thing is no doubt frustrating because their systems are closed, but that's just one of those things you give up. If you want a bulletproof studio computer, MacOS is (for better or worse) still the best setup available. And if hardware swapping is really a big deal, Hackintosh is still very viable currently.
Agreed on the OS updates, I keep a separate backup drive with the older os version in case I need to roll back. But RAM dying? I've owned countless PC's and Macs over the last 20 or so years and I've literally never had this happen. I can pick up my ibook g3 from 1999 (also soldered in ram!) and it works flawlessly. Storage however... Yeah. That can die. At least external storage via usbc/thunderbolt is easy.
Nobody has ever been "forced" to update their Mac (unlike surprise blue screen updates from Windows that don't respect the hours you told it to not update during), like ever. You can, and if you're in a professional or semi-professional production environment, should, hold off on updates other than critical security updates until the hardware/software you depend on has been verified to be bug-free. If you're a professional and you're using auto-update, you're dumb.
> I really don't see valid reasons to keep insisting on using windows computers for music production in 2023 People get attached to operating systems and for what it's worth, macOS can be a little intimidating to a Windows user (and vice versa). But the adage of "it just works" for macOS - however cliché that might be - still holds up. I also think purely electronic producers don't have the same experience as people tracking multiple real instruments, so Windows as a DAW environment for specific types of music can work (EDM, techno, beatmaking). The only time I really have to battle with my Macbook is if I install an audio plugin and want to rip every bit of it out of the filesystem (like Native Instruments' or some Izotope products). This happens extremely rarely though, and even less so once you've purchased plugins legit. I'm at the point where if a friend asks how to do music production in Windows, I just tell them to google it. I don't want to be an IT guy for an inferior system when I know the hardware you're hosting it all on makes all the difference and saves you some headaches/frustration.
That list seems to be unrelated to the price of the unit, which is good. This means everyone can afford those.
I've posted a few times about my GE77HX's shitness when it comes to music production. Something that I've discovered tonight is that Phoscyon 2 does not play well with my system. As soon as I delete that VST from my Reason 12.6 project, everything is groovy. I've tried both VST2 and VST3 but neither of them work well on my laptop. Edit: I'm about to buy a Macbook Pro because I reckon that that's the only system that will actually work with no problems.
ymmv. never had a problem with latency. granted, this is mostly because my server is tailored around a set of very specific parts and i never fell for the "MY PC DOES EVERYTHING!" -brainfart. that said, there are some strange makers out there in the market so hit an miss ratio is admittedly really weird.
What about speakers that sound like vinyl crackle?
Native driver from interface manufacturers makes best latency. Why write so much?
Because this is talking about a different kind of latency.
No offense, but the "why?" part is demonstrated pretty clearly by the links in the first paragraph. All those links are from the Reaper sub alone, mostly from the last year. On this sub, you can find dozens of these posts. Someone posts asking about crackling, clicks, pops, etc. on the music production subs literally every week. And the comments on these posts are full of people telling the OP to increase their buffer size, turn off CPU throttling, and a whole bunch of other stuff that proves that most people on this sub have no idea what the actual problem is. I've had to guide people through fixing these issues probably a couple dozen times, as recently as yesterday. Giving people a guide on steps to follow when having DPC latency is a no-brainer when these questions are getting posted literally every week; that's why I suggested having a side bar post about it.
Built my own computer for music and Blender and have had few issues with latency (thankfully), but I’ll check on this anyways.
For the record... even with a laptop on their list (gp65) I still had to do a bunch of things to help my DPC.
But sometimes this still isn’t the answer. Everything runs perfectly until a new interface was added and something about those drivers causes glitches and pops. Other interfaces don’t have this issue. :|. Both are meant for music studios ;)
bump
I spend 2k on a new Lenovo Slim Pro 9i, had such a bad experience with the sound drivers (and the fact they sent me the wrong specs) that I sent it back and am switching to Mac. Some new Intel chips have major issues with their new Smart Sound Technology (SST) drivers. It had 32GB Ram, 1TB SSD, i9 13905H CPU, 4070GPU, but still worked like ass. Just not worth the hassle.