https://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic.php?id=4600
https://www.qrsmusic.com/TechCorner.asp#tab-2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bMq5JRoDzM

QRS PNOscan uses lasers to scan the motion from underneath acoustic piano keys.

Given that PNOscan has been installed on some fairly "upper tier" pianos I might research measurements that have been made.

On faith alone - - I believe SOMEONE must have used their PNOScan installation to figure such things as hammer flight time and delays in the escapement.

It is interesting to see in this lecture
http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectur...asure.html
that an acoustic piano has a latency in the range of 20 to 30 ms (staccato forte case), measuring time from the moment when the finger touches the key to when the strings start moving. So this is more or less what one would expect from a digital installation when summing all latencies: keyboard + software + soundcard.

I know it was a while ago when this link was posted, but I seem to have missed it.

Although the results are interesting I don't like the micro switches and metal foil approach, it probably changes what it is designed to measure.
I think fiber optics and high speed video cameras could provide better accuracy while disturbing the mechanism a lot less.

JMAO, etc.

I have a Roland PCR-800 midi-controller hooked up to a Creative X-Fi Platinum (the one with the 5 1/4 front panel with midi connections, etc) sitting in a quad-core (Q9300) PC running XP SP3.

Using ASIO4All 2.9, Pianoteq 3.5.2 allows me to use 128 samples at 48khz with 256-note polyphony with no crackles and with the cpu hardly breaking a sweat. Performance index is around 30+. Note: Using the Creative ASIO driver introduces crackles unless sample count is bumped up to 256.

So far so good.

Yet I was still experiencing latency. Not half a second, but just enough to be clearly noticable. I had not used the system for a while (I have a Roland RD700SX which I often use with a notebook instead) but I knew that this had worked with far less latency in the past.

I tried moving the midi-controller from the USB PCI card to one of the USB ports on the motherboard. No change.

I then tried switching to the 5-pin DIN midi connector on the controller, connecting it to the mini-DIN of the sound card. No change.

It finally struck me that a while ago, I had performed a complete reinstall of this system.

Turns out that the Creative X-Fi card upon reinstallation had defaulted to its "Entertainment Mode". Once I brought up the Creative control panel and switched it to "Audio Creation Mode", all was well again.

Checking with ASIO Latency Test Utility 3.7, the latency reported for the Creative ASIO drivers (this utility would not work with the ASIO4All driver) went from 70ms down to around 15ms. Feels great now/again.

Greg.

Note however that I am using my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra for MIDI input, which MAY actually be defective. (M-Audio have suggested this). So I can't make any conclusions about anything at the moment, when this component is used.

I get arpeggiation with DirectSound too - the delay due to the large buffer sizes does not only cause a pure delay - it causes arpeggiation.  I have a theory that this could be due to the fact that the audio interface does not actually have a physical buffer, so perhaps the driver writes the buffer to the hardware in a high priority process, during which processing of MIDI is blocked. We could contact the authors of ASIO4ALL - they would have a deep understanding of all this.

Greg.

At this moment I have a temporary situation (in absence of my definitive soundcard which is a RME by the way) in which I'm running against the onboard soundcard (intel) via DirectSound.

I've got a weird situation at hand at this moment. When I run Pianoteq as standalone I get a max samplerate of 44k and 13ms latency but .... if I run Pianoteq as a VSTi-plugin within Cantabile I can get up to 96k and 10ms latency or more precisely: Cantabile runs at 192K and the plugin itself at 96k.
So in fact (and this sounds contradictionary) introducing overhead results in better performance!? And moreover, why can't Pianoteq get a samplerate as high (and latency as low) as Cantabile in this specific situation?

It seems that (depending on the reason of this big difference in latency) choosing the right tools is very important in achieving the best performance.

Greg.

Also, you should have your Wave volume on 100%, in your soundcard's volume control settings.

EDIT: Oops, I see that I have mis-read your post, Pianoshrek - you have already reduced your volume in Pianoteq.   Try reducing the main volume in your soundcard mixer, as I said, just in case you are overloading your soundcard.   It is still possible that Pianoteq is clipping, though - sometimes I hear a bit of clipping, even though I can't see any blue or red. If you haven't tried it on -6 yet, give it a go. However, if your limiter is on, it is probably unlikely that a small amount of clipping would be audible, because the limiter does greatly reduce the effect of clipping.

Greg.

OK, will try to find some studio with Indigo and will try the Edirol with USB again...
I'm not able to do the latency test again in the following 3 weeks with my friend's system, he will travel abroad and me too.
Volume was reduced (without blue and red lights - this is not explained in the manual, what exactly the colors means - maybe limiter and too high volume). Will see about the another sound card and the quality.

One more comment when I saw that you're using some Edirol:
I have Edirol UA-25EX USB card and it works perfectly in my macbook pro 2,53GHz. In fact I can't hear any difference in latency with my Motu Ultralite Firewire interface.

But in my desktop PC (Vista, dual core 2,6Ghz) latency is much much more with Edirol. So I have to conclude that my latency problems are with windows, not with USB card itself. I'm a mac fan...