Re: low-latency audio I/O for Windows

[Niclas Schult <niclasschult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Dan,
the first thing I want to recommend is to take a look at Wuschel's
Asio4all-drivers, available at
http://www.asio4all.com/
or the Asio2ks-drivers, available at
http://www.asio2ks.de/

which both provide a generic low-latency audio-driver for WDM audio
devices and worked very well for me with every soundcard I tried using
windows, although I doubt that you get latencies less than 3ms. Another
possibility (if using windows isn't crucial) would be to try the
Jack-audio-connection-kit for Linux, which provides generic
low-latency-drivers as well.

If price doesn't matter, a good purchase would be the an audio-interface
belonging to the "RME Hammerfall"-series, which guarantee latencies
between 1 and 3ms. For an overview, see

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/hammer/index.htm   and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RME

With the Fireface800 and Fireface400 RME offers also firewire-variants
of the Hammerfall-interface.

For interfaces in a lower price-range I would recommend to have a look
at the interfaces offered by M-Audio at
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=mobileinterfaces

or  those offered by Alesis at
http://www.alesis.com/

I wouldn't reccomend an USB-audio-interface in your case, since the
USB-interfaces generally achieve worse latencies than internal
interfaces and firewire-cards, due to the slower speed of the USB-bus,
altough I think that there are people taht would disagree.

I hope this was of help to you,
Greetings --- Niclas


Freed, Dan schrieb:
> Dear Auditory List Members:
>
> I'm looking for a low-latency audio interface device for use with
> Windows computers.  The goal is to perform real-time signal processing
> on the PC for the purpose of developing and testing hearing aid DSP
> algorithms.  Consequently I need to keep the hardware-related signal
> delay to a minimum.
>
> Unfortunately, manufacturers generally don't include latency in their
> specifications, and tech support and sales people don't seem to have
> latency information either.  So I'm hoping that people on this list can
> point me at some acceptable devices.
>
> My target is a total input-to-PC-to-output delay <= 3 ms at 48 kHz.  I'd
> prefer an external device (USB or FireWire).  Other desirable features
> include a mic input, a headphone output, analog I/O level controls, and
> support for a wide range of sampling rates (16, 24, and 32 kHz would be
> nice).  But the critical feature is the low latency; I can work around
> other limitations.
>
> Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!
>
> Dan Freed
> Senior Engineer
> Dept. of Human Communication Sciences & Devices
> House Ear Institute
> 2100 W. Third St.
> Los Angeles, CA  90057  USA
> Phone: +1-213-353-7084
> Fax: +1-213-413-0950
> Email: dfreed@xxxxxxx
>
>