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What do you want to know about the USB buffer size which is not explained in the manual?

Basically, i want to know whether most people pay attention to the CPU power or any distortion/latency in the sound which would indicate that the usb buffer is too far to the left. It seems to me like the latter is true. Is this correct?

I think most people pay attention to the sound quality first and then the display jumpiness, so that you will really have to experiment on your system to see what it can handle and then set you buffer accordingly. The faster the CPU the lower number(left side) of buffer setting. I think a good way to approach it is set it really high and then lower it until you notice the display being choppy, then back up one from there. I say the display because I know it has been mentioned before by the Rane/Serato guys that the s/w focuses on sound quality first then display quality second. So once you have a good display then the audio should already be fine.

good display when loading a track or while it is playing because i know that when you are dragging a track the display gets a little choppy for a second but it doesn't affect the sound qualit.

i have a question about this: I havent had any dropouts or issues in the past month of so with ssl, so i havent really questioned my buffer setting or anything, but I do have some pretty choppy graphics.... am I cutting it to close? what do most of you guys' graphics look like during an average club night? for example, when loading a song, I almost always have a complete stall of graphics for a half a second or so..... if I backspin for more than about 15 seconds of a song or so, the graphics start to get really choppy..... everything's been working so I have no complaints, but im just wondering if this is what most of you guys' grpahics do or if Im walking a thin line as far as possible audio dropouts

djpetey, from my experience it is normal that during long/veryyy fast backspins SSLs graphics get choppy as it has to decode the mp3 again. I might be wrong but I think that decoding the mp3 in advance nad buffering it would help here... who knows, maybe its a planned feature for the future :)

The chopiness I am refering to is when the track is playing watch the smoothness of the label line go around.
I agree with nik on the graphics display with long backspins it sometimes gets choppy.

I understand what you guys are saying but realistically having the buffer size at 20 is going to be way smoother than having it on 1 no matter how fast your cpu is. Therefore, I think it is fair to say that when it gets noticeably choppy in which it looks like it jumps or goes way slower than what it should be= you should change your settings. Does this make sense? For instance, I don't think everything should be as smooth as if you buffer was at 20 for your system to work fine. However, it should not be so choppy that it is very noticeably glitchy or jumpy. How does this sound?

Right, but keep in mind that the higher the buffer setting the more latency you might have.

so a combination of the middle is probably the best=not choppy yet not smooth as having the usb setting at 20

not so smooth as having the usb setting at 20-make sense?

thats pretty much where I have it all set now.... I havent noticed any dropouts but my graphics arent very perfect.... I honestly dont care about the graphics but I was just scared that maybe it was cutting my buffer setting to close to dropout point..... it sounds like some graphics glitches are normal though, so im happy

i am just wondering what the moderators think about this subject?

On the 2.4ghz P4 laptops here, the graphics are fine at the lowest buffer setting, until you rail the cpu by doing something in windows in the background. These have shared graphics memory, with a proper graphics controller I'd say the graphics would be tough to glitch with such a powerful CPU.