Best latency settings for Traktor Pro vci100

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Best latency settings for Traktor Pro vci100
Posted on: 10.01.2011 by Ammie Deni
Hi there,

what are the recomended latency settings people are finding works best with a VCI100 and Audio 2 DJ before any pops and crackles happen?

is it better 1ms usb or 2ms usb/

Also has anyone had problems with traktor pro 1.2.7 crashing whilst loading up a WMA file?
Lane Ylitalo
09.07.2011
Originally Posted by FoNeM
You know onelove, that's a very good point, however it's not my problem. I did have that issue on my PC when I was trying to stream one of my sets live and the buzzing in the background was indeed caused by the a/c adapter.

The disturbance I'm having is an increasingly horrid distortion in sound where it sounds like my music is going through a phaser windtunnel. It starts out with minor pops here and there and within a matter of seconds, the music is almost unrecognizable. I know it's a latency issue because I have my options window open while playing my tracks and when I notice the distortion coming in, I can drag my latency up higher to eliminate it, but only for a matter of seconds until it stars again.
Rats.. was hoping I could be the kevening in shining armor with a simple answer! So much for that...

The only other thing I've experienced close to this was with Traktor's latest driver for my Audio 4 DJ. I was using TPro 1.27 at the time and had to rollback.. I was getting unheard of latency spikes and sound distortion because I had updated the driver.

I don't believe that would be your issue though since the Audio 6 should be working perfectly with T2 (it was after all designed for it). I would check the drivers on your cpu and make sure they are all updated. If they have older or newer version you might want to try them all out... I know mac uses a different audio driver than ASIO so that might be where your problem is stemming from...

Unfortunately I don't know much about macs so I can't really be of much use in that respect. I would look at your processor to make sure it's not spiking unnecessarily... on my PC I've disabled all visual themes, indexing of drives, wireless (which you said you have done) certain non-essential services to conserve processor power, changed the paging file size, and also changed the priority of tasks from programs to background services.

I will also say that sometimes you need to disable the wireless card itself and not just the service controlling it... god knows why but it's also worth a shot.

Sorry I can't be more specific but again.. mac's not my forte. I would go to traktor's site and see if they can't be more helpful.. maybe even the tech support (dealing with tech support sucks I know).

One final word of general advice... I would partition off your hard drive and a find a dual boot program (not sure if your bios would naturally handle that or not, mine does but you may need something like BootCamp).. even if only to have 2 separated mac OS. I did this on my win7 computer to have 2 sides:

Internet browsing, production, gaming etc and then a live performance side. Again the live side has severe changes made to the Operating System to give absolute best performance.. but this also is a great help in the case of unexpected technical problems.

Most of the time latency issues are due almost solely to processor problems and driver/application interactions... so that would be where I would focus your search. I would seriously consider having a second OS installed as this helps to lessen the amount of crap you have running at once and leads to a smoother experience most times.
Ella Rick
27.01.2011
Originally Posted by Mr_Moo
I DJ'd on Saturday evening with the new 1.2.7 and Traktor crashed twice! Both times when loading a track into a deck. The first time it just required Traktor to be rebooted. The 2nd time, it wouldn't let me close and reopen Traktor. Kept saying 'another process is already running'. I had to reboot my laptop and wait, with a dancefloor full of people whistling and jeering! Good fun, naaaat.
Ouch!!

What kind of laptop Mac or PC?

Thanks.
Ammie Deni
10.01.2011
Hi there,

what are the recomended latency settings people are finding works best with a VCI100 and Audio 2 DJ before any pops and crackles happen?

is it better 1ms usb or 2ms usb/

Also has anyone had problems with traktor pro 1.2.7 crashing whilst loading up a WMA file?
Lane Ylitalo
09.07.2011
Originally Posted by FoNeM
You know onelove, that's a very good point, however it's not my problem. I did have that issue on my PC when I was trying to stream one of my sets live and the buzzing in the background was indeed caused by the a/c adapter.

The disturbance I'm having is an increasingly horrid distortion in sound where it sounds like my music is going through a phaser windtunnel. It starts out with minor pops here and there and within a matter of seconds, the music is almost unrecognizable. I know it's a latency issue because I have my options window open while playing my tracks and when I notice the distortion coming in, I can drag my latency up higher to eliminate it, but only for a matter of seconds until it stars again.
Rats.. was hoping I could be the kevening in shining armor with a simple answer! So much for that...

The only other thing I've experienced close to this was with Traktor's latest driver for my Audio 4 DJ. I was using TPro 1.27 at the time and had to rollback.. I was getting unheard of latency spikes and sound distortion because I had updated the driver.

I don't believe that would be your issue though since the Audio 6 should be working perfectly with T2 (it was after all designed for it). I would check the drivers on your cpu and make sure they are all updated. If they have older or newer version you might want to try them all out... I know mac uses a different audio driver than ASIO so that might be where your problem is stemming from...

Unfortunately I don't know much about macs so I can't really be of much use in that respect. I would look at your processor to make sure it's not spiking unnecessarily... on my PC I've disabled all visual themes, indexing of drives, wireless (which you said you have done) certain non-essential services to conserve processor power, changed the paging file size, and also changed the priority of tasks from programs to background services.

I will also say that sometimes you need to disable the wireless card itself and not just the service controlling it... god knows why but it's also worth a shot.

Sorry I can't be more specific but again.. mac's not my forte. I would go to traktor's site and see if they can't be more helpful.. maybe even the tech support (dealing with tech support sucks I know).

One final word of general advice... I would partition off your hard drive and a find a dual boot program (not sure if your bios would naturally handle that or not, mine does but you may need something like BootCamp).. even if only to have 2 separated mac OS. I did this on my win7 computer to have 2 sides:

Internet browsing, production, gaming etc and then a live performance side. Again the live side has severe changes made to the Operating System to give absolute best performance.. but this also is a great help in the case of unexpected technical problems.

Most of the time latency issues are due almost solely to processor problems and driver/application interactions... so that would be where I would focus your search. I would seriously consider having a second OS installed as this helps to lessen the amount of crap you have running at once and leads to a smoother experience most times.
Tawanda Allessio
04.07.2011
You know onelove, that's a very good point, however it's not my problem. I did have that issue on my PC when I was trying to stream one of my sets live and the buzzing in the background was indeed caused by the a/c adapter.

The disturbance I'm having is an increasingly horrid distortion in sound where it sounds like my music is going through a phaser windtunnel. It starts out with minor pops here and there and within a matter of seconds, the music is almost unrecognizable. I know it's a latency issue because I have my options window open while playing my tracks and when I notice the distortion coming in, I can drag my latency up higher to eliminate it, but only for a matter of seconds until it stars again.
Lane Ylitalo
04.07.2011
Another thing to keep in mind that no one here mentioned... if you hear a crackling that very well might be a small static problem from a ground loop and NOT a latency/soundcard issue.

Seems like a stupid common-sense thing to check.. but you never know. Try unplugging your laptop's adapter and see if that fixes it.
Tawanda Allessio
03.07.2011
Well, like I've said, it's not the VCI...at least not entirely. When I hook up my Audio 2, I can set the sample rate at 96000 with my latency down to around 320 at the highest and I can play for hours with no artifacts or crackling. I recently upgraded my Mac OS to 10.6 and also updated Traktor to 2.0.3(?) and noticed there were drivers for the new Audio 6 specifically for OSX 10.6. It still didn't help. I'm about to sell my Audio 6 cuz I dropped a bunch of cash on it believeing it would be better and it's just not. I'm pretty disappointed with it.
Matha Obray
03.07.2011
^^Meh i can never get the latency completely gone on my vci. Ive given up
Tawanda Allessio
01.07.2011
Hey everyone. I'm having some pretty nasty latency issues on my MBP I got a couple months ago. I have used Traktor programs for years on my Asus PC running Windows XP and have never had any problems. It was a 2009 model dual core (around 2 GHz processors) and 2 GB RAM. I used the original Audio 2 DJ from NI as well...never had much to complain about.

Anywho, I got this shiny MBP to use just for DJing and my music production. I upgraded to Traktor 2 when it came out as well as bought an Audio 6. Ever since initially using that combo with my Mac, I can't seem to get my latency settings correct. Anything below 512 (whether I'm using 44100 sample rate all the wat to 96000) I get pops after 5 - 10 minutes. Even knocking it up to a whopping 1024, I *still* get artifacts. When I use my Audio 2, I don't have nearly the issues. I can usually keep my latency below 250 ~ 300 and be fine for hours.

I'll admit I am new to Macs, but I'm still a fairly computer savvy guy. Wat can I do to free up my lappy and keep it from choking? BTW, I do have bluetooth and airport disabled. I don't know what else I can kill or if I can make a DJ profile with minimal processes starting up.
Warner Rotberg
28.01.2011
I've also never managed to get the FX working since I bought it. Despite using the FX glitch patch, which didn't do anything but make the glitching sound a little different!
Desiree Logie
28.01.2011
OK, I'm trying to clarify something as at least as subset of the participants ITT seem to be in the dark about it.

For MIDI over USB, latency is very small. 1 ms latency or less is typical on most systems, some systems might see something around 1.5 ms. (EDIT: this latency occurs due to delay and jitter present during signal transmission over USB.)

However, that is nothing to worry about. Who cares whether your computer receives MIDI messages 0.7 ms after your action or 1.1 ms after your action? Similarly, who cares whether an LED on your controller lights up now or in (now + 0.5) ms? I highly doubt anyone will be able to notice such tiny differences.

On the other hand, the latency in your audio path is very important, simply because latencies we see in practice vary much more widely with the gear (that is, laptop, operating system, and audio interface) used. (EDIT: also, if you set the latency too low, there can be a severe consequence, namely a buffer underrun which leads to glitches and/or dropouts.)

BOTTOM LINE: your VCI has little to do with the whole latency discussion, as it's a controller and not an audio interface.
Warner Rotberg
28.01.2011
willinfluence

Ouch!!

What kind of laptop Mac or PC?

Thanks.
Running a stripped down version of Vista 32bit / laptop.
2.2ghz dual Pentium.
3gb RAM.
Traktor is installed on a seperate internal HDD, which also has all my music on it.
Reece Murray
27.01.2011
@GoldBar3:

Also, if you're getting weird behavior on the jogs, your settings might need to be tweaked (Controller Manager>Scratch). Try 4% sensitivity, 2% acceleration to start, mess around 'till you find something you like.

This is granting you're not in cd-jog mode or something, that your controls are set up correctly to scratch.
Leonida Richel
27.01.2011
@Goldbar3: You need more RAM.
Gertude Manzella
27.01.2011
My problem I'm having is that I have read the community DJTT & N.I.'s & am still having problems with Delay. I predominately play Funk, breaks & am a Turntablist. Scratching Is nearly impossible. And when I back cue, the wave form is jumping around all over. And I'm not even using my Snd Card. While I'm waiting on my firmware device to upgrade I still figured the controller to be able to, at the least, be able to do this. It must be a problem on my part, because I cant imagine the controller performing this poorly...?
Any Suggestions would be most appreciated.

My apologies in Advance if this is not the correct place for this post..

Vci-100 v.1.2
MacBook (Intel)/ 1G Ram
Numark I/O
Ella Rick
27.01.2011
Originally Posted by Mr_Moo
I DJ'd on Saturday evening with the new 1.2.7 and Traktor crashed twice! Both times when loading a track into a deck. The first time it just required Traktor to be rebooted. The 2nd time, it wouldn't let me close and reopen Traktor. Kept saying 'another process is already running'. I had to reboot my laptop and wait, with a dancefloor full of people whistling and jeering! Good fun, naaaat.
Ouch!!

What kind of laptop Mac or PC?

Thanks.
Warner Rotberg
27.01.2011
I DJ'd on Saturday evening with the new 1.2.7 and Traktor crashed twice! Both times when loading a track into a deck. The first time it just required Traktor to be rebooted. The 2nd time, it wouldn't let me close and reopen Traktor. Kept saying 'another process is already running'. I had to reboot my laptop and wait, with a dancefloor full of people whistling and jeering! Good fun, naaaat.
Odilia Gatica
14.01.2011
i get 1ms on my quad core pc and an audio4
Tatum Ansaldo
14.01.2011
My 2009 MBP can normally run at 1ms on the Audio 8 without problems.
Roy Houn
14.01.2011
ive just got a macbook pro, and i can set the latency right down to 1ms using my vci-100 without any problems whatsoever
Layne Koop
11.01.2011
The latency is less about the controller and soundcard, and more about the computer. Most modern dual core laptops with at least GB's of RAM will handle <10ms. Exactly how low the latency will get requires some experimentation. Some of the bleeding edge computers are getting into the <3ms range....and that's pretty darn impressive.

On the other end of the spectrum....my original DJ computer is a 7 year old 1.6GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM. I ran with 40ms latency. Any less, and it would very occasionally drop the audio (once every 3 or 4 gigs). After a RAM upgrade to 1GB, I was able to lower the latency to 25ms....but I was also *brutal* in killing off non-essential processes. Needless to say, this would not make a good laptop to hook to a MIDI controller. But for keyboard & mouse DJing I still get a lot of use out of this setup. (Oh, and I'm not running Traktor on this...I use BPM Studio, which has a *very* small footprint when running.)
Matha Obray
11.01.2011
if its not popping then leave it. u may be able to increase it tho. I run a numark dj i/o andand have the latency at 5.5ms

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