Update gear to improve stats? Old vs new Mac.

[djs]

I'm on a 2008 mac pro and using a firewire 800 interface.  Plenty of processing and memory on a SSD, but definitely older bus, etc.  Does anyone know if there would be any improvement on system latency and jitter if I were to upgrade to a new macbook pro with a thunderbolt or usb3 interface (assuming a good quality interface with low latency drivers)?  Thanks.

[waban]

Good question. I had to replace my old iMac in late 2019. Here's my experience with a new iMac (SSD internal),
- Catalina OS,
- modest Fios (82 down, 29 up)
- 2009 Apogee ONE interface (USB 1.1)

→ latency was 10.2ms
I dropped the Frame Rate to 1 and now see latency of 7.8
jitter bounces around, going between .5 -.7, then dropping way down, ...
processor use is usually in 4-6% (w/o video; a little more, not much, with video)

Is this better than what you are seeing with the old Mac Pro + firewire?

Hope this helps.

I just posted a parallel question about updating from USB to thunderbolt.

[djs]

Good question. I had to replace my old iMac in late 2019. Here's my experience with a new iMac (SSD internal),
-  Catalina OS,
-  modest Fios (82 down, 29 up)
-  2009 Apogee ONE interface (USB 1.1)

→ latency was 10.2ms
I dropped the Frame Rate to 1 and now see latency of 7.8
jitter bounces around, going between .5 -.7, then dropping way down, ...
processor use is usually in 4-6% (w/o video; a little more, not much, with video)

Is this better than what you are seeing with the old Mac Pro + firewire?

Hope this helps.

I just posted a parallel question about updating from USB to thunderbolt.

Your numbers look very similar to mine.  I'm using frame rate of 2.5, which is the lowest I can get away with.  I wonder if a new mac would allow me to go to 1.  Seems likely as you and one of my band mates both have newer machines and are using frame rate of 1 successfully.   Do you know what your numbers looked like before the computer upgrade?  Also wondering if they would improve with an interface using better than usb1.

This attached pic would suggest exactly that (higher numbers are better - and they are NOT latency numbers, but rather benchmark ratings):

It was taken from this thread on Gearslutz:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/618474-audio-interface-low-latency-performance-data-base.html

FYI, it is from 2011 and still going - 135 pages to date!  I didn't read them all lol.  But I did read the first and last ones if that counts

[waban]

My iMac is a 4.2 GHx quad core i7. The only other Mac available is a Mid-2012 retina MacBook Pro Mojave OS, 2.7 GHz Core i7, so it's not a great second data point, but ...

I ransacked the house, found a thunderbolt-ethernet adapter, plugged it in, downloaded JamKazam, plugged in interface, ran thru the settings, etc.

Result: no change in latency from iMac when frame size was set to 2.5 or 1 ms, but at least there was no problem going to 1ms. The Jitter values seemed about the same as before too..

Sorry, this experiment was not that helpful. One of my kids may have a really old MacBook and if so, I can try that later tonight.

[djs]

Thanks for the effort! I'm wondering if your total system latency would change. You wouldn't be able to see that. You need to be in a session with someone else and they can see those stats and then share them with you. Why you can't see that on your end I have no idea!

Along these lines I have come across a bunch of different manuals, white papers, and forum posts that talk about how the different cables / protocols work and handle things differently. Some have safety buffers, etc. Some send all channels interleaved, while some send each independently. These can obviously affect latency, as well as how you hear drop outs, data corruption, etc. Not to mention general data transfer speeds. I'm on my 11th or 12 headache right now! Interesting, but I never wanted to know this stuff.

One of the bigger issues seems to be that there is no way to change the buffer setting in core audio for mac. The software you are using either gives you an option to change it or it doesn't. For instance iTunes doesn't let you change it. The info I found said that it operates with a buffer of 512. Not sure if that is still the case. So this tells me that JamKazam has predetermined the buffer and doesn't provide an option for mac users to change it. I think PC users can change it (AISO settings in the audio set up, if I understand correctly).