Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards i get huge latency problem running ivory II on my laptop!

hardware:
notebook with i5 cpu, 4g ram, 128g SSD
presonus audiobox
yamaha clp-s406

connection:
yamaha midi out connect to presonus midi in, presonus usb connect to notebook usb port,
and presonus line out to yamaha line in

driver:
inside ivory cantabile, within the audio engine options, 4 drivers were shown
1. ASIO ASIO4ALL v2
2. ASIO Audiobox VSL ASIO driver
3. Directsound - speakers(Realtek Highdefinition audio)
4. Directsound - speakers(Audiobox 22VSL Audio)
and i selected 2.

any sample size setting of lower than 2048 result in some click sound after over 10 seconds of playing,
and when on 2048, the latency is 46.4ms which is a bit too slow for normal play.
the curious thing is when i was even not playing the piano, the load percentage on the cabtabile is at 70%!

i've read many threads here about the ivory and i am pretty sure that my hardware is enough to get a very
low latency. so what's wrong with it? is it because of the way i hooked up the notebook, audiobox and the piano?
can anyone give me sone advise? Thanks very much.

Strange. Have you tried connecting only the midi cable? Or alternatively only the usb cable. Maybe something gets confused when both are connected.

The lineout from Yamaha to Presonus linein is also unnecessary, unless you want to record the sound from the Yamaha into the PC.

i connect line out from the presonus to line in of yamaha is because i want to use the piano's internal speaker for sound.

your suggestion is, connect the piano with the notebook using usb cable, and take away the midi cable? i will give it a try. thanks.

Oh ok, I misread that. Makes sense.

Midi and USB most likely do the same thing, which is to send the midi data from your keyboard to the computer. They include both just for convenience.

A good test would be to switch to ASIO4ALL, set your desired sample size (within Ivory) and listen on headphones direct from the laptop (i.e. completely bypass the Presonus). That should indicate whether the problem is with your Audiobox or internally in the computer. If it's in the computer, there are a lot of tweaks available to make Windows perform better.

I may be wrong about this, but I think Cantabile only meters a single core. Hence, you can drive the meter well above 100% with multi-core machines. I wouldn't worry too much about the metering, but you could try running Ivory outside of Cantabile to see if you get different results. Doesn't it have a standalone application? Alternatively, you might want to try it in Savihost, which is a very undemanding little program.

there seem to be no problem if i use the asio4all driver and listen to the notebook sound output without connecting the presonus.

by using the presonus instead of the notebook sound card to generate sound can only get a better result as far as i can understand. cantabile is the application comes with the package to drive the ivory, and from the manual the basic requirment is duo core cpu, 2g ram and 7000 rpm hard disk. so i dont think i cannot get a low latency out of my hardware list.

Have you disabled the Realtek sound card? If not, it will create problems - go to the Device Manager, and disable it. You can turn it back on later if you need it for other applications.

Good luck

i have tried to disable it in the device manager, and the result is the same.

i just tried to bypass all the presonus stuff. just connect the piano to my notebook by usb cable. use the asio4all driver, setting the sample rate to 512(latency = 11.1ms). and listen to the sound through the notebook's head phone jack.

the result is completely different now! there is no more crack sound once in a while and theres hardly any latency i can feel after i finish playing the whole turkish march! obviously the previous latency comes from the usb connection from the presonus to the notebook!

That's not the conclusion I would reach.

I see exactly the opposite. I get terrible results with ASIO4All and the internal sound card, but flawless results with the Presonus card and Presonus ASIO.

so the next step i try will be another way of connecting the devices, that is

1. connect the piano to the notebook via usb cable
2. connect the presonus to the notebook via another usb cable
3. connect line out of presonus to the line in of piano

how do you hook up your devices?

Might have nothing to do with it, but have a look at the power options for your notebook under Control Panel. My laptop has several settings ranging from max power saving to max performance. On anything other than max performance, the processor speed is throttled back in order to save battery power and it causes problems when using software pianos. Definitely worth checking.

i have tested the 3 ways of connection:

first
yamaha midi out connect to presonus midi in
presonus usb connect to notebook usb port,
presonus line out to yamaha line in

second
connect the piano to the notebook via usb cable
connect the presonus to the notebook via another usb cable
connect line out of presonus to the line in of piano

third(throw away the presonus!)
connect the piano to the notebook via usb
use the asio4all driver
listen to sound through the notebook headphone jack when playing

only the third way give a satisfactory result!
for the first 2 ways of connection, there are some annoying cracking sound once in a while when playing the piano!

i am starting to suspect there is something wrong with the presonus itself!

That would be my guess too. Either that or you have some driver issues. Did you download the latest drivers for the Presonus?

The Presonus should give you even lower latencies and better audio quality, if it worked correctly that is.

Presonus should give you even lower latencies and better audio quality. yes, that's exactly what i wanted out of it for buying it, its not cheap either. so i am very disappointed.


i install the presonus driver from the disk in the package, but even a out dated driver wouldnt give me cracking sounds when playing. i may need to run some self test on the presonus!

It's possible that drivers on the CD are very outdated and might have compatibility issues with Windows 7. Make sure you get the latest from the Presonus site.

ok. i will go presonus to get the latest driver, thanks!

i installed the latest driver from presonus website, its 1.47.0.0(24 Aug 2011), the previous one i was using is 1.42.0.0(20 Jun 2011)

the result is just the same, there is some bursting, cracking sound when i play the piano, both from the headphone jack and line out from the presonus.

my notebook has 2 usb ports, and in fact when i plug in the presonus to one of them, there is constantly some feedback noise, like buup, buup .. from the presonus output. but if i switch the presonus to connect to the other usb port, this kind of feedback noise disappear!

may be i just need to throw away the damn presonus!

Yeah, at this point I would assume the product is faulty. Return for a refund if possible.

i let my sister(she's grade 8) to try out the two sounds, one from the yamaha clp-s406, and one from the ivory II German D. and she said the one
from the clp-s406 is better, and more like a real piano!

looks like i've wasted my money, is it because i havent used the presonus or i need to do some fine tuning on the ivory cantabile?