Tips for getting low audio latency in UAE?

[Ral-Clan]

Hi, anyone have tips for getting low latency Paula audio in WinUAE.  This applies in regard to music composing software (such as trackers and MIDI).

I've had good luck getting OctaMED SoundStudio working under UAE.  But I have to set the Audio Buffer in UAE to 1 so that sounds are not delayed.  (so when I press a key on the keyboard to trigger a sample it is played instantly in OctaMED).  I've heard that in decreasing the audio buffer in UAE, it also increased load on the CPU.

Since I have an ASIO compatible sound card (low latency sound card).  I'm wondering if there are other tricks to decreasing Audio Latency. From what I've read online, UAE doesn't yet support ASIO audio drivers.  There was an experiment a few years ago with a plugin called "PortAudio" which was written by Tony Wilsen:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=514884
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47887

I can't tell if PortAudio has been abandoned by Tony Wilsen...it seems to have been abandoned or is just a Beta not being updated.

There is also some discussion about setting the audio driver in UAE to WASAPI, which is supposed to be some type of low latency audio driver written by MicroSoft and which is part of Windows.  I've never used WASAPI drivers so I don't know.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=45721

The only real audio latency issue I've noticed is in Bars & Pipes, when I turn on the internal Paula metronome "beeping/clicking".  It doesn't match the actual metronome as played through MIDI (i.e. when the metronome triggers a rimshot or click on an external MIDI sound module).  The Paula's click is slightly delayed from the actual beat.

MIDI timing is good from UAE, it's just the Paula delay that sometimes means you can't use internal Amiga sounds with external MIDI instruments.

Anyone doing music recording in WinUAE?

[Ral-Clan]

I just wanted to report that I took the time to install the PortAudio plugin for WinUAE and for a while I was getting wonderful low-latency audio.

Next time I started the emulation though, things started going wonky....will have to play with this some more.

[Ral-Clan]

Hmmm....well, PortAudio is a BIT touchy (once you've got it working don't play with ANY settings in UAE or your sound card while the emulation is running).  But when it IS running it does its job well....nice snappy low latency audio.  I ran tests on both Bars & Pipes and Dr. T's KCS for a few minutes each, both were set to generate a metronome click that triggered an internal Paula beep and a rimshot on an external MIDI tone module simulataneously for each beat of a bar.  Normally, under using Windows DirectDraw audio driver in UAE, there was noticable latency between the Paula beep and the external tone module rimshot even when the Audio Buffer was set to 1.  With the PortAudio plugin and the ASIO driver chosen, the two tones were in sync and simultaneous (no detectable latency delay).

[Ral-Clan]

You mean Toni Wilen (i.e. the developer of WinUAE) :rtfm:.  Probably best to ask on EAB where Toni moderates a WinUAE support forum.

Yup, it is indeed Toni Wilen...sorry for the typo.  I have been e-mailing him privately about this and apparently he's uploaded a new version of PortAudio to the winuae site (just yesterday).

Also, I found out WASAPI support is only available to users of Windows Vista or later.

[Ral-Clan]

"Tips for getting low audio latency in UAE?"

Don't use UAE, is the best way get that latency down to nothing.

Yup I knew that comment would come sooner or later.

[Ral-Clan]

TheGoose and I were just talking about this the other night. It seems no matter how fast your PC is, sound emulation on UAE will never be as good as a real Amiga. Something about the paula and custom chips makes switching samples and play back rock solid with Octamed.

Hmmm....well, so far I haven't had any problem with OctaMED under emulation.  I haven't really stressed it with quickly switching samples or anything though....I generally use one or two samples per channel on a 4-track MED/MOD.  Could you elaborate on what you mean by the switching sample problems you've encountered?

Under UAE OctaMED has seemed pretty good sound wise.  When I'm done composing a song in it I use OctaMED SoundStudio's 16-bit file mixdown function - I did this on my real Amiga and now in UAE to render the final song to a 16-bit hard drive file.  So in the end I was not playing the output through Paula anyway.

But....I am keeping around several real Amigas for the day when/if I have unlimited space to set them up (right now it's just not possible!).  Then I suppose I could set up a dedicated A500 just for OctaMED.

[Ral-Clan]

I agree. I've seen it running on A A1000 with fast ram and it was sad.

An A1200 with an 030 and 16mb+ of ram is perfect.

Oh, I see.  Well, I guess I was thinking of an earlier version of OctaMED.

Are there any trackers that run well on a stock A500 with 1MB RAM?

I was playing around with my old MIDI sequencer Dr. T's KCS the other day in UAE.  I used to run this on my A500 in the late 1980s.  I guess I was getting nostalgic for "the simple days" before DAWs when making electronic music was so immediate and involved real hardware.  I was fantasizing about setting up a stock A500 with Dr. T's and maybe a tracker as a dedicated no-frills music machine.

I love DAWs (I use Reaper), but sometimes all those settings and choices and hundreds of plug-ins get in the way of "just making music".  I end up tweaking more than making music.

Although...sometime nostalgia is a lot more fun than the real thing!