ASIO performance on 0404 usb

[Freshman]

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask, but many of you seem to be quite knowledgable about hardware stuff so i thought i'd just ask it here.

Today i bought the e-mu 0404 usb card. Main reason i bought this because i wanted to decrease the output latency.
installed drivers that came with it. fired up reason, played back one of the tunes i'm working on but after a while as more tracks got active the sound started to crackle and stuff...
now i know this is a buffer issue, so i increased the buffer time from 10 ms to 20, then to 100... then to 500ms. the amount of crackles decreased of course, but at 500 they still weren't gone when i forwarded/rewinded the playback.

Now i understand the buffer needs some time when i stress it (forward/rewind playback) but 100ms+ is a quite a lot right? i have a core duo 1.8ghz laptop so i figured it'll be enough, but is it not? or is there some setting besides latency i can change to improve this performance? sample rate is at 44.1 which is the lowest setting.
My onboard sound card with directx driver gives me faster playback (~90ms), without crackles!

Did i just totally misunderstood the whole idea of an external soundcard here, or am i doing something wrong?
Hope this is not attracting llama's

[Astral]

I use one of the ASIO Duplex drivers through my 0404, works perfectly. Although after an hour or so full on I just need to reset the box as it appears to build slight latency for some reason.

[FSTZ]

that is pretty bad man...

crackles at 500ms??

maybe you have a insanely huge project and you need to streamline a bit

I know that I have messed up projects beyond the point of playback before and it didn't matter how much ram was installed or processor speed

is this happening when you are starting your project from the beginning or is it an older project you opened from your previous soundcard?

[b166er]

Yeah 500ms is crazy bidness. You've got it right, but are you using the pure ASIO drivers, not Generic low Latency drivers, or Direct X drivers. Should be E-Mu ASIO drivers.

[b166er]

I use one of the ASIO Duplex drivers through my 0404, works perfectly. Although after an hour or so full on I just need to reset the box as it appears to build slight latency for some reason.

I dont think the ASIO Duplex drivers are best, the pure E-MU drivers is what ya want. Not 100 sure about the 0404 USb but I have a 1212m and my options are generic ASIO, ASIO Full duplex and EMU ASIO drivers. Best performance from EMU ASIO.

[Freshman]

Thanks for the responses!
It was a project i was working on already before i got this card.
I've tried to playback some more projects now, and it looks like the project i was testing on was a bit heavy synth wise. I know i was already pushing my pc to the limit with it before i bought the 0404 usb.
As far as i know reason has no dual core support, so i guess i just have to optimize my song, maybe freeze the tracks that are heavy on cpu or something..

i've found that some of my other tracks play back without crackles at 20 ms buffer, i guess that's decent. just have to stop doing other stuff besides music production at the same time, that's a good thing prolly

Another question then, at sample rates 44.1 and 48 the sound sounds like before, but if i up it to 96 or higher the high's become a bit dry. Is this normal? I'm talking about playback not recording
cheers!