Hello everyone,
I've made a similar post on the Modartt forums, but nobody has been able to help me, so I'm trying my luck here as this might not be an issue specific to the Pianoteq 8 software.
Pianoteq 8 runs absolutely fine on all three of my systems running Windows 10 when I use the integrated audio, or the soundcard. Two are laptops, one is a desktop PC. I use 48k/48k, maximum polyphony and a buffer size of 64 for 1.3 ms delay with ASIO4ALL drivers. No crackling, no sound drops. CPU usage is rarely more than 20% of any single core.
As soon as I use an external DAC instead of the integrated audio - either a Topping DX1 or an Apple USB-to-3.5 mm adapter - I get sound drops and crackling. What's even weirder is that all buffer sizes behave as expected, but as soon as I select any combination of sample rate and buffer size giving me less than exactly 2.0 ms of delay, I get a very big delay of about half a second. All of this only happens with USB-DACs, on all systems. The USB devices work fine in any other scenario, so they're not the problem either.
I'm now relatively certain that the issue is the input buffer in the external DACs. When I select a buffer offset of 20 ms in the ASIO4ALL settings, the delay issue mentioned above improves by a lot. It's still more delayed than lower latency settings though.
I was told that Hifi DACs have this issue when playing music live. However, I don't want to record anything and would like to keep the sound of the Topping. Is there a cheap and simple solution to this issue? Anything that I could plug between the Topping or Apple dongle which deals with the input buffer issue?
Thanks a lot!
I've made a similar post on the Modartt forums, but nobody has been able to help me, so I'm trying my luck here as this might not be an issue specific to the Pianoteq 8 software.
Pianoteq 8 runs absolutely fine on all three of my systems running Windows 10 when I use the integrated audio, or the soundcard. Two are laptops, one is a desktop PC. I use 48k/48k, maximum polyphony and a buffer size of 64 for 1.3 ms delay with ASIO4ALL drivers. No crackling, no sound drops. CPU usage is rarely more than 20% of any single core.
As soon as I use an external DAC instead of the integrated audio - either a Topping DX1 or an Apple USB-to-3.5 mm adapter - I get sound drops and crackling. What's even weirder is that all buffer sizes behave as expected, but as soon as I select any combination of sample rate and buffer size giving me less than exactly 2.0 ms of delay, I get a very big delay of about half a second. All of this only happens with USB-DACs, on all systems. The USB devices work fine in any other scenario, so they're not the problem either.
I'm now relatively certain that the issue is the input buffer in the external DACs. When I select a buffer offset of 20 ms in the ASIO4ALL settings, the delay issue mentioned above improves by a lot. It's still more delayed than lower latency settings though.
I was told that Hifi DACs have this issue when playing music live. However, I don't want to record anything and would like to keep the sound of the Topping. Is there a cheap and simple solution to this issue? Anything that I could plug between the Topping or Apple dongle which deals with the input buffer issue?
Thanks a lot!
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