TIPS: Audio Drop outs due to low latency

Day before yesterday I was at one of my friends place to solve his problem of drop outs. He was experiencing drop outs with increase in number of Audio tracks. The hardware he was using was TASCAM FW 1804 and the buffer was set to 256 samples for a latency of 9.9 milliseconds approximately. The number of tracks in the particular project he was having problem had went up to 126 Tracks.

We increased the buffer to 1024 samples ( increasing the latency) and the problem was solved. Even if you have audio events only on few tracks - the increase in number of tracks blocks resources for itself when you are using asio drivers. So if you want to work with more audio tracks, you will have to increase latency in order to avoid drop outs. Otherwise try to keep the number of tracks somewhere between 30 to 40 for smooth operation, if you are using vst instrument and looking for lower latency to program midi. Nowadays almost all software's come with a " FREEZE " feature which allows you to freeze you midi track and unload your vst instrument freeing extra resources. When you freeze a vst instrument - the midi track gets converted into audio file and is routed through the vst track.

I will explain freeze function some other day. Now if you ever  experience drop outs while working on a project don't panic.