Destroy Latency, Destroy...

[chaospigthing]

wot spec would give me complete annihilation of latency problems, i am currently using pentium3 1.8ghz, 256ram, notebook with not too goody soundcard. thinkin bout getting a creative extigy...

[Polaris20]

Get a better sound card.
VX Pockets are coming down in price, that would probably be an ideal way to go, if you don't want to spend over 5 bills.

[gdoubleyou]

You will never completely get rid of latency.

Latency is the time it takes for a signal to be processed from the input of your soundcard, through the electronics and sent to the output.

pre-recorded tracks are sitting on your hard drive, when you hit record audio data is cached and processed through your outputs.

The signal you are recording is still at the input.

The easiest way to deal with latency is with a multibus mixer, so you can monitor your signal before it goes through your soundcard. And you can listen to the prerecorded material on another bus, and be perfectly in sync.

All recording systems have latency, analog tape machines deal with it by the placement of the record and playback heads.

[NYMorningstar]

Originally posted by chaospigthing
wot spec would give me complete annihilation of latency problems, i am currently using pentium3 1.8ghz, 256ram, notebook with not too goody soundcard. thinkin bout getting a creative extigy...

Hey Chaos,

That's a pentium 4 you have there. I have a similar in a notebook but I'm finding that there aren't alot of options at the moment to use it as a portable recorder other than using the usb ports which I understand are too slow for recording multiple tracks. If you come up with a good deal please post it up here.

[BibleMan]

I am not sure if it will solve your latency issue, but I HIGHLY recommend the Extigy. I just got one, and it makes my ThinkPad sing. Very nice, quiet, clean unit with lots of connectivity possibilities.

[NYMorningstar]

I don't doubt it sounds great but what I'd like to see is a product that let's you do multitrack recording with a notebook.

[MartyMcFly]

"You will never completely get rid of latency"...

That sux...there should be NO latency...I have used a DAW for a long time...And I have never even heard of latency untill now... I think latency is just something made up by the software manufacturers to get you to buy more and evermore expensive gear that will never get rid of the latency problem...Why is there even latency at all? Arent computer connections supposed to be faster thatn light??

[Laynestaley]

"Why is there even latency at all? Arent computer connections supposed to be faster thatn light??"

May be, but sound will never travel at lightspeed!!

[NYMorningstar]

Originally posted by Laynestaley
"Why is there even latency at all? Arent computer connections supposed to be faster thatn light??"

May be, but sound will never travel at lightspeed!!

The latency is not a product of a computer connection nor does it have to do with the speed of sound. It's more about sampling rates and the clock speed in your CPU. So far the usb ports don't keep up to the demand for multitrack recording. USB traditionally has a "low speed" mode operating at 1.5 Mbps and a "high speed" mode operating up to 12 Mbps.

The good news is technology has spit out a new product, USB 2.0. Like the original USB spec, USB 2.0 lets you easily connect PCs and notebooks to peripherals, but this iteration transfers data at 480 Mbps, about 40 times as fast as its predecessor.
USB 2.0 support is now available for Windows XP through Windows Update.
Beta drivers for Windows 2000 are available from Microsoft through their Beta Program. Production level drivers for Windows 2000 are expected to be available in the near future. USB 2.0 drivers for Windows 98/98SE are available through third party vendors like Adaptec, NEC and Orange Micro. In most cases, if you upgrade your PC with an add-in card, it will come with a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 driver install CD, that covers 98, 98SE, and ME.

I'm hoping someone now takes advantage of this and writes some software for us so we can use the notebooks for multitracking!

[Bass Master "K"]

A better soundcard should really help, especially if it has a dedicated ASIO driver with it. I am running a 1.9 Ghz, 512 SD DRAM P4 (pretty similar to yours) and have a Q-10 that has it's own ASIO driver and that drastically cut down on latency (from about 200 miliseconds down to 20). Then I went into Cubase and optimized it's latency and it is now running about 4 miliseconds latency. At such a minute amount I can't hear any delay. Good luck!