FocusRite Scarlett 2i2 and high latency issues

Hardware
1

Hello!

I’ve just purchased a FocusRite Scarlett 2i2, purely for the purpose of getting audio into touch with as little latency as possible.

I’ve installed drivers and gotten things up and running however when I place an audioDeviceIn CHOP in touch and connect it to a audioDeviceOut CHOP and select the 2i2 for in and outputs I can hear a huge delay (the 2i2 has a 0 latency monitoring output on the device as well)

I was going to write off the issue as the device being faulty or just not compatible with my setup but I have had perfect results with the Reaper audio recording software.
In it’s settings/preferences it seems to have a button that launches the driver’s configuration utility for latency and such. It just seems to correctly enable the devices ASIO or something.

I’m fairly new to the audio stuff, so maybe I’m doing something wrong or expecting something from the hardware it can’t do?

I’ve also tried ASIO4ALL with no luck. the option shows up but the 2 channels are just flat with no activity or sound coming in.

Any advice or thoughts on alternatives would be great!

Thanks.

2

Does the Focusrite come with it’s own ASIO drivers? That would probably be the best bet.

If you’re trying ASIO4ALL, the thing with it is you need to open your app that’s going to use it, like TouchDesigner, drop in the Audio In CHOP, select ASIO4ALL, then you can access the settings in the system tray of Windows, and clicking on that will open up the actual ASIO4ALL settings where you’ll have to enable and disable the I/O you want.

3

Thanks for the reply Elburz,
I’m a bit closer but still no luck.

I can successfully get ASIO4ALL working as an input into touch using my laptops standard audio jacks etc.

However

The asio4all control panel comes up in the task bar, I’m able to modify settings and such but they do nothing at all. Moving the buffer slider, latency compensation, etc don’t seem to make any changes to the sound delay.

I have a headphone jack splitter sending my phones music stream to a speaker, and the other stream to the microphone jack which I feed in touch to an audio device out so I can hear both streams at once. The delay sounds about the same as going through directSound !

In Reaper though the ASIO4ALL works as intended, sliders work, everything is responsive, and latency improves dramatically.

I’ve uninstalled my Scarlett 2i2 drivers and unplugged it so I’m back to stock hardware atm.

I can also confirm same results on my laptop, and on my PC.

This is driving me nuts! I can’t find anyone other instances of problems like this online… I have a feeling there is something absurdly simple I’m missing…

Thoughts?

4

Hi Lucas.
What are your values for Audio Device In: Buffer Length, and Audio Device Out: Buffer Length.
Your latency will be the sum of these two numbers at least.
By default they are 0.1,sec and 0.15 sec, resulting in a default latency of 0.25 sec.

5

Rob,

I’ve not been able to get an acceptable latency tweaking either the audio in or out buffers in touch. I didn’t know if they were in seconds or milliseconds.

MY actual question is at the bottom of the post! there’s a lot here but I just wanted to explain my findings as best as possible first.

Audio IN:
Driver: ASIO
Device: Focusrite Scarlett ASIO
Rate: 44100
Buffer Length: .03 (as low as I can go)

Audio OUT:
Driver: ASIO
Device: Focusrite Scarlett ASIO
Buffer Length: .1 (I was able to go as low as .08, )

This is my current testing setup:
In the below image/video, I have an mp3 playing from an external source. it sends a pulse every so often. You can hear 3 simultaneous pulses:

[url]- YouTube

The first pulse is from the 2i2’s direct monitor output. So that’s the 0-latency reference point.

The second pulse is the audio input in touch being passed straight through to an audio out (with all the above settings)

The third pulse is the second one with a delay CHOP. I used this to get an idea how many MS a delay I was getting as I was unsure how else to debug that. That delay is .17 seconds.

So if I’m thinking correctly, thats .17 minus audioIn’s .03 buffer which leaves me with .14 of a delay coming from somewhere.
The 140 milliseconds is enough delay to where the animations being driven by it feel more random than synced to the music.

I know the hardware / driver CAN work, as I’ve gotten results in another application.
In Reaper, the preferences look like this:

When I click on “Asio Configuration” it brings up this driver configuration panel:

and configuring through these settings does everything I’d expect it should. I am able to monitor the recording as well as hear the 0 latency output in this application too and the latency goes WAY down when set. I can get it well within the 15-30 ms range

However there’s no option to bring up a dialogue like that in touch. However I can go to program files / scarlett / USB 2.0 Audio Driver and there’s an exe for a control panel there that looks like this:

It’s not the same though, and it’s 3 radio bubble options don’t bring the latency down anywhere near where it needs to be.

My only guess is that it’s using some generalized control panel scheme and defaulting the ASIO buffer size to it’s max of 4096 samples, or something close to that (this is the max in the drop down in the Reaper control panel version)

[b]- Do you have any thoughts as to what might be keeping the device from properly working or at least configuring?

-Do you know of any other tried and true small or relatively inexpensive audio interfaces people have used successfully in conjunction with touch designer to achieve lower latencies? (I only need to pull in a single stereo input at this point)[/b]

I’m in contact with Focusrite too and I will mention the different control panels to try and dig a little deeper there, as I feel that’s indication of something…

THANK you!

6

Just a quick bump, any tried and tested audio interfaces that definitely work with touch designer that you guys would recommend?