From ron.alexander10@comcast.net Thu Jun 05 08:34:05 2014
Subject:Re: Advice on tuning a Windows 7 PC for VB3?

Thanks again for everyone's input!

Regarding hard drive speed or issues, if VB3 is hitting the hard drive at all during normal playing activity, then it's a very badly written program. This is on a laptop with 8 GIGs of memory and VB3 is the only process running. There's absolutely no reason for it to hit the hard drive when just playing notes. Also, I don't see the disk light blink at all, so that should prove that the HD is not the issue.

As an experiment, I installed Native Instruments B4 II on the same laptop using the same MIDI interface, ASIO4All, and lo and behold, NO LATENCY! I can switch back and forth between VB3 and B4 - VB3 always has the note on latency and B4 never has it.

Regarding the audio interface, I have an Echo Indigo PCMCIA audio interface card which I installed to test the audio interface theories. No difference in the VB3 latency problem.

Finally, to rule out any MIDI inteface issues, I picked up an M-Audio Axiom 49 USB keyboard on CraigsList. It made no difference. The tests above with VB3 and B4 were done using a Roland XP-50 keyboard (my main performance axe), MIDI Out into a Roland Edirol UM-1S MIDI-to-USB converter dongle, and then with the M-Audio keyboard. B4 note on is instantaneous, VB3 is practically unplayable for walking bass and jazz riffing.

Next step may be to try VB3 on a Macbook Pro to see if it's a Windows specific issue. What do I need to run VB3 on a Mac?

Any other ideas? Does the VB3 vs. B4 difference give anyone any clues to the problem?

Thanks!
Ron