V-Stack

V-STACK
Setting up your system 4 – 39
❐ It’s very important that one and only one card is the clock master, other-
wise the network cannot function correctly. Once you have set this up, all
the other cards in the network will take their clock signal from this card
automatically.
The only exception to this procedure is if you are using an external
clock – which could be from a digital mixing desk or special Word
Clock synchronizer for example. If so, you must then leave all your
ASIO cards in Clock Slave or AutoSync mode, and make sure that
each of them is listening for the signal coming from the synchronizer,
usually passed through your ADAT cables or Word Clock connectors
in a daisy chain fashion.
Minimizing the latency
The general definition of latency is the amount of time it takes any sys-
tem to respond to whatever messages are sent to it. For example, if
your system’s latency is high and you play VST instruments in real
time, you will get a noticeable delay between when you press a key
and when you hear the sound of the VST instrument. Nowadays, most
ASIO-compatible audio cards are capable of operating with very low
latencies. Also, all VST applications are designed to compensate for
latency during playback, making the playback timing tight.
However, the latency time of a VST System Link network is the total
latency of all the ASIO cards in the system added together. Therefore
it’s extra important to minimize the latency times for each computer in
the network.
• The latency does not affect the synchronization – it's always perfectly in
time. But, it can affect the time it takes to send and receive MIDI and au-
dio signals, or make the system seem sluggish.
To adjust the latency of a system, you typically adjust the size of the
buffers in the ASIO Control Panel – the lower the buffer size, the lower
the latency. Generally speaking it's best to keep to fairly low latencies
(buffer sizes) if your system can handle it – about 12 ms or less is usu-
ally a good idea.