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RME HDPSe AIO Pro - Latency under Windows vs macOS
- Authors
- Name
- Boomspot
- @Boomspot
Introduction
Which operating system offers the lowest latency for your DAW when using an RME Card?
How did we test?
We tested the RME HDSPe AIO Pro under OSX and Windows 10. The PCI-E card was installed in a Sonnet Tech TB3 Echo Express SE I chassis. We haven’t tested RTL with the card installed directly in the PC's internal PCI-E slot but since Thunderbolt has direct access to the PCI-E bus there shouldn't be a performance hit. RME has confirmed this as well.
OSX (10.15.7) RTL
Here are the latency results for OSX:
32: 159 sample/3.605 ms
64: 223 samples/5.057 ms
128: 351 samples/7.959 ms
256: 607 samples/13.764 ms
512: 1119 samples/25.374 ms
Windows 10 (20H2) RTL
Here are the latency results for Windows:
32: 111 samples/2.517 ms
64: 175 samples/3.968 ms
128:303 samples/6.871 ms
256:559 samples/12.676 ms
512:1071 samples/24.286 ms
Conclusion
Based on our comprehensive testing, Windows 10 appears to exhibit a marginal 1ms latency advantage over OSX. However, this minimal difference of 1ms in latency does not substantially favor one platform over the other. The more significant benefit of Windows for Cubase Pro users lies in its support for Direct ASIO hardware monitoring directly within the DAW. This feature effectively eliminates latency during tracking at higher buffer settings and obviates the need for the Totalmix application during tracking processes. Nonetheless, it's noteworthy that in our experiments, tracking in Cubase and Pro Tools on OSX with a 64 sample buffer setting resulted in no perceptible latency.