AfterAudio

I purchased the Universal Audio Arrow Thunderbolt 3 audio interface awhile back because I was excited about finally using my virtual instruments and rack extensions with low latency.  I had an Intel NUC with a Thunderbolt 3 port and was able have stable audio playback with the 128 / 44.1khz buffer setting.  The latency was between 5-7 ms, which was great.

 

Later on I ended up getting a Lenovo Yoga 730-15IKB that has a Thunderbolt 3 connection, so I could work on my music away from home.  I even got the Universal Audio Suhr PT100 Amplifier plug-in for tracking guitars, which sounds amazing.  The first time I tried to start a new song in Reason I noticed that the audio starting breaking up and the song sounded like it was slowing down in a strange way.  The CPU and RAM utilization never came close to peaking.  The Yoga laptop has very similar specs to the Intel NUC computer ( i7 Processor and 16GB of RAM).  I messed with the buffer settings for several days and researched the issue to see if there was a fix.  I uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers several times.  I double checked all the settings that UA suggested on their support site.  I was able to get relatively stable audio playback with the buffer set to 512 / 96khz but the latency was too high to record any virtual drums, bass, or guitar.

 

I ended up opening a support ticket with UA support and gave them very detailed information about my issue. UA support believed that the issue occurred because the laptop will throttle up or down when the CPU load is high or when lower CPU usage is detected.  This can be fixed if the BIOS settings and C states can be optimized for real time audio processing .  Unfortunately, many 2 in 1 laptops do not provide access to these settings, which was the case with my Lenovo Yoga 730-15IKB.  2-in-1 systems (notebook/tablet) are not recommended for Universal Audio Thunderbolt 3 devices.

 

 

I went back and forth with UA support about this issue since I did not see any CPU spikes and CPU utilization was between 30-50 percent when playing back demo songs in Reason.  They ended up closing the ticket and I was stuck with a laptop that I could not use to record.

 

So after wasting a bunch of time troubleshooting instead of recording I decided to try the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen USB Audio Interface.  Thunderbolt 3 ports are backwards compatible with USB-C so I could use the exact same TB3 cable and port that I tried to use with the UA Arrow.  I opened the Reason demo song and hit play and it worked perfectly.  I even set the buffer to 128 / 44.1khz which gave me 5-7 MS of latency and still had no issues.  I could finally record my virtual instruments, guitar, and bass with low latency.  I have been using this setup for a few months now and have had no issues.  I can quickly write new songs tracking my guitar through the instrument input that gets routed to the Helix Native plugin.  Drums and demo bass parts can be tracked with the Reason Drums and Bass rack extensions.  Focusrite's audio drivers are rock solid.