btw I'm not using a Celeron N3050 for Pianoteq, it is to slow for me and I showed my findings here in the forum:
http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic...77#p943177

... seems to be too over-simplified to be useful IMHO. It gives these performance indices:

Intel Celeron N3050 @ 1.60GHz: 467
Intel Celeron N2930 @ 1.83GHz: 463
Intel Core i5-2467M @ 1.60GHz: 952

While the N3050 should be on par with the N2930, it is very sluggish. On the other hand I'm using my N2930 with nice performance since 1-2 years (64 samples (1.3 ms), 48 kHz, PTQ 5.8.1, Debian Standardkernel, incl. effects reverb, delay etc.)

This would better cope with what you called " the normal multi-threaded passmark", I guess you mean:

PassMark - CPU Mark
Intel Celeron N3050 @ 1.60GHz:     892
Intel Celeron N2930 @ 1.83GHz:     1637
Intel Core i5-2467M @ 1.60GHz:     2330

... one reason seems to be, that USB usually has more latency, than PCI. In another thread I found an increase of ~5 ms USB vs. PCI on the same netbook: http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/viewtopic...14#p939514

cheers

On my now fanless i3 1.8ghz (Haswell), I can set it to 22/44khz + JACKD for other audio apps without any issues.  However, bringing up a browser to play Youtube in parallel totally kills everything.

* Pianoteq seems to use 2 thread and having more than two cores makes no difference to Pianoteq (althought they can be useful for other apps running simultaneously).  There's a benchmarking thread somewhere in the forum where someone did exhaustive testing to find this out, but I can't find it right now.

* As a rough guide to performance I use the Single Threaded Passmark ( https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html ) as a basis when two or more cores are available.

* Your N3050 has a single threaded passmark of 467

* Your i5-2467M has a single threaded passmark of 942 ( nearly double, despite running at the same clock speed as the N3050 ! )

* The N3050 has two cores, and the i5-2467M has 2 physical cores with 2 logical cores per physical core.  The physical cores are all that matters for Pianoteq, but overall the logical cores add about 20% more performance to the i5 over the N3050 and the normal multi-threaded passmark gives the N3050 about 900 and the i5-2467M about 2300 ( notice how the logical core - hyperthreading - raises the overal i5 performance by more than the factor of 2 the physical core alone would ).

So you would expect that not only would the i5-2467M performs much better on Pianoteq alone, but it would have enough horsepower to do more background work, which may help latency (a bit).

As a footnote I run Pianoteq on both a laptop (similar to your but an N2840) and a desktop (with a Zeon E3-1240) under Linux Mint 17 and 18 with no problems.  I haven't noticed any latency issues but I note that when I read about them they're usually involving USB audio devices and that seems to be a common issue with these things.  If I was adding an audio device like that I'd almost certainly try an RT Kernel or an audio specific distribution and get a PCI based card (like an RME) but I've no direct experience of these myself.

With a 5 ms recording-buffer  the RTL is 11 ms now (compare 21 ms with the Celeron above):

I also can reduce the recording-buffer to 3 ms without glitches. Then the RTL gets better once again being 9 ms now:

So the output-latency should be around 5-6 ms or better from a Focusrite 2i2. In my opinion its hardware is not the limiting factor.

I tried to estimate the latency of my Focusrite 2i2. I played and recorded a click-track at the same time with this USB-Audiointerface. The time difference between send and receive divided by two gives a vague idea of the output latency.

I set the recording-buffer in audacity to 5 ms, seems to be the minimum to get no drop-outs. As shown in the picture, the click returns 21 ms later (round-trip-latency). Divided by 2 the output-latency could be ~10 ms.

Considering the 5 ms recording-buffer the round-trip could be 21 ms - 5 ms = 16 ms.

Divided by two 8 ms could be a reasonable output-latency of the 2i2.

I used a slow Acer netbook with Celeron N3050 1.60GHz, 2GB RAM, Debian/Sid Linux, audacity 2.1.2, 24bit/48kHz,battery-powered, no performance tuning, Debian kernel 4.9.2-2.

Cheers

The headline clock speed is not a good guide to the available computing power.  Very similar designations can have very different performance, and different processors with the same clock speed can have quite different performance figures.

And regarding Apple kit,, my standard warning is that you are paying a considerable premium for just the name.  The same hardware in a PC laptop is typically a lot cheaper.

Did you check your DPC latency? http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

It'll report which drivers are causing the most DPC latency, then you can disable those devices. Usually it's LAN and WiFi.

That sounds like the bitter truth....

Still... Anybody ever used the Native Instruments Traktor Audio MK2 with Pianoteq? My beloved ancient Sony Vaios last chance....

I might end up and just get a Macbook ...

For the latency part and drivers... Windows sucks....

Or install Linux ?

1.8 GHz CPU is definitely on the slow side of things...

Here is my problem:

PT used to work well on my old Notebook (1.8 GHz, 2GB RAM) with ASIO-driver and audio optimasation, the internal soundcard delivered a satisfying sound. Latency was never a problem at 44 KHz with 128 Samples (came out at 2.8 ms). Two weeks ago the notebooks line out faded away so I can't use it any longer.

A new and CPU-stronger Notebook is on the way but I would like to continue to use my old Notebook (rock solid quality, no break downs, SSD hard disc) as a light mobile solution for band rehearsals.

The Question is: Can I squeeze acceptable latency (round-trip-latency !) out of that Notebook (1.8 GHz, 2GB RAM) driven with a USB-audio-Interface ???

The Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 2nd gen brings Pops, crackles and insufficient latency at 44 KHz with 128 Samples. Probably the computer ist just to weak for a modern device such as the 2i4 2nd gen.

Any hints? Tweaking suggestions?

Or should I use a smaller, less CPU- and RAM-intensive interface (I will very likely not need to use any of the recording options of a USB-interface during the next 5 to 10 years, I will use it for playing Pianoteq exclusively).

The small and simple NI Traktor Audio 2 MK2 light might be an option but according to the manual it requires a system with a minimum of 2.0 GHz and 4 GB RAM. Any experiences ? Suggestions?

Thank you for any commentary !

Cheers