What is the right buffer size to record and to mix?

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

This article is a look more in depth to a topic that we have already seen here: buffer size and latency.

Basically the idea is to record at lower buffer size and mix at higher buffer size.

Why? Because the lower the buffer size, the lower the latency, therefore if you are using for example a virtual amplifier it will sound more "real" under your fingers, but it will be heavier on the CPU, while with a higher buffer size there will be more latency, but if you're mixing this is not a problem: it doesn't matter if it takes even half a second or more between when you press play and when the reproduction starts.
When playing, instead, having half a second of delay between when you play and when you hear it makes it literally impossible to play an instrument.

Is there a sweet spot between the settings? It depends on 2 factors: 

1) how powerful the computer is

2) how heavy is your session: the more plugins you have, the harder it will be for the CPU to process everything in real time.

That's why it's suggested to use different settings when recording and when mixing: when mixing you can keep it around the maximum settings (1024, or 2048), which makes the project a lot less CPU intensive.
When recording, instead, the aim is to keep the latency at around 10ms or less, and usually this is a setting that you can obtain with 128 or 256 buffer size. 
There is no real need to get too low, like 64 or lower, because this way unless the project is basically empty, you can start experiencing clicks and pops here and there, because the CPU struggles too much.

And you? What buffer size do you use when mixing and mastering?

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