Subject: Re: low-latency audio I/O for Windows From: Niclas Schult <niclasschult@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:03:45 +0200 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>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@xxxxxxxx > >