Native Instruments B4 II - Manual (Page 20)

20 – B4 II B4 II
was developed by Steinberg. It is highly recommended for its low latency,
multi-channel audio card support, and high performance.
DirectSound: Developed by Microsoft, this is a is a component of DirectX 5.0
or higher for Windows. How well DirectX works well depends on your sound
card. If you adjust the interface for an acceptable amount of latency, you
may hear glitches and clicks in the audio output that can only be fixed if you
increase latency.
MME (Multi Media Extension): This is the standard Windows audio driver.
Most sound cards support this interface and work with it quite well. However,
MME is even less suitable than DirectSound for real-time applications due to
its comparatively high latency.
Core Audio: This audio interface for MacOS X is integrated tightly into the
operating system, and works with external audio hardware as well as the Mac’s
integrated audio output.
Plug-In Details
VST (Virtual Studio Technology): Like ASIO, this cross-platform plug-in
technology was developed by Steinberg. It is the most common plug-in format,
and many programs are optimized to work with VST plug-ins.
DXi2 (DirectX Instrument 2): Based on Microsoft DirectX technology, this
plug-in interface for software synthesizers and instruments is designed for low
latency and high performance on the Windows platform. Cakewalk Sonar and
Image Line FL Studio are the most well-known hosts that support DXi.
RTAS (Real Time Audio Suite): This interface protocol from Digidesign allows
using plug-ins with ProTools (or other Digidesign-compatible software). Unlike
traditional TDM effects that depend on using Digidesign hardware, RTAS plug-
ins are “native”. This means the host processor performs all computations
needed for the plug-in.
AU (Audio Units): This plug-in format is exclusively for the Macintosh OS X
platform, and is tied in closely with the operating system.
More About Latency
As with any digital device (including hardware signal processors) that convert
audio to data and back again, a computer adds a certain amount of delay
(“latency”) when processing audio signals. Fortunately, with today’s computers
and low-latency sound card drivers, this delay can be so small that you can’t
hear it (
e.g., under 3 milliseconds, which is about the same delay caused by
moving your head one meter further away from a speaker). However, typical