audacity?

M

m_von_lie

New member
I have a few quick questions about a free program called audacity. I've used it so far to record vocals because it has a really neat and simple display, but am wondering if there is any problem with a delay as it seems as though it puts the vocal track a second or two after I sing it, my timings is usually not that bad.

Also I wonder if there is any quality loss, and am looking for tips to prevent it, and worst(well, not that bad;)) case scenario, another program that is equally user friendly. Price of no concern.
 
m_von_lie said:
I have a few quick questions about a free program called audacity. I've used it so far to record vocals because it has a really neat and simple display, but am wondering if there is any problem with a delay as it seems as though it puts the vocal track a second or two after I sing it, my timings is usually not that bad.

Also I wonder if there is any quality loss, and am looking for tips to prevent it, and worst(well, not that bad;)) case scenario, another program that is equally user friendly. Price of no concern.
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It's probably nothing to do with audacity. It'll be the latency of your soundcard.
 
Audacity also doesn't support ASIO by default, you have to compile it yourself to do that.
 
m_von_lie said:
I have a few quick questions about a free program called audacity. I've used it so far to record vocals because it has a really neat and simple display, but am wondering if there is any problem with a delay as it seems as though it puts the vocal track a second or two after I sing it, my timings is usually not that bad.

Also I wonder if there is any quality loss, and am looking for tips to prevent it, and worst(well, not that bad;)) case scenario, another program that is equally user friendly. Price of no concern.
Click to expand...

I use Audacity all the time and your problem could come from a few different situations. Most likely, it's just a memory issue but make sure you close all the other running programs when you record.

Another thing is, no matter what instrument I track, including vocals, there's always a slight latency issue; not to a second or two like in your case, but a bit. I easily fix it by moving the track backwards with the Time Shift Tool. A helpful tip that I learned from experience is that the more you zoom in on the track, the better your precision will be in moving a track back (or forward).

Hope this helped and good luck.
 
A simple way to reduce the latency issue is to lower the playback volume (in audacity) then raise the volume of your monitor(s). Keep the playback volume set to below "3" to greatly reduce latency when adding additional tracks. More RAM memory will also help, but lowering the playback volume seems to help more than anything else to reduce latency in Audacity than anything I've tried. I use powered monitors and rarely set the Audacity playback volume above "2" to prevent problems. You may also notice that the latency issue becomes more noticable as you add more tracks, even with plenty of RAM you may encounter latency problems by the time you are on track 6 or 8. If you like the layout of Audacity, you might like N-Trax recording software, it's similar in appearance but works better. You can download a trial (limited version, 3 tracks) to try it. Audacity is great for learning the basics of digital recording because it is one of the easiest programs to use but it is not perfect.
 
TheTomTrendy said:
I easily fix it by moving the track backwards with the Time Shift Tool. A helpful tip that I learned from experience is that the more you zoom in on the track, the better your precision will be in moving a track back (or forward).
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I also do this. It may be a memory thing; I immediately had less problems with this issue when I upgraded my computer a year or two ago. The other thing I run into is that sometimes the latency is not uniform over the course of the track; a rough alignment using time shift is usually enough, but I occasionally have to go into a track and cut out or paste in tiny segments in dead spots between sounds to get the timing right.
 
danw said:
I also do this. It may be a memory thing; I immediately had less problems with this issue when I upgraded my computer a year or two ago. The other thing I run into is that sometimes the latency is not uniform over the course of the track; a rough alignment using time shift is usually enough, but I occasionally have to go into a track and cut out or paste in tiny segments in dead spots between sounds to get the timing right.
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This is a more serious issue and one I doubt has anything to do with Audacity. You might want to play with hardware settings, make sure your soundcard audio drivers are up to date, and just check anything that might be related. I've used Audacity to record on my Mac laptop and never had anything like that happen.
 
SonicAlbert said:
This is a more serious issue and one I doubt has anything to do with Audacity. You might want to play with hardware settings, make sure your soundcard audio drivers are up to date, and just check anything that might be related. I've used Audacity to record on my Mac laptop and never had anything like that happen.
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Yeah, it's probably more likely that my problem is somewhere in between the headphones :). Actually, I usually track into Audacity from tape, so I have a feeling it's more related to slight speed variations on the tape. My point is it's still relatively easy to fix.

Edit: I remembered where else I had trouble. Doesn't Audacity split the file up into smaller pieces so it doesn't have to keep them all in memory at one time, then piece them together during playback? On my old machine, I couldn't record directly into Audacity, because it made a little blip every time it started a new piece. But that was also a _really_ old computer.
 
Dani Pace said:
A simple way to reduce the latency issue is to lower the playback volume (in audacity) then raise the volume of your monitor(s). Keep the playback volume set to below "3" to greatly reduce latency when adding additional tracks. More RAM memory will also help, but lowering the playback volume seems to help more than anything else to reduce latency in Audacity than anything I've tried.
Click to expand...

That's an immensely helpful tip. I'm definitely gonna use that advice. Myself, I've never bothered to mess with the playback volume but if it helps with latency, I'm there.
 
Thank you all so much! I've downloaded Reaper, but before I buy it I'm going to try all your tips.

To clarify, the latency of the recorded track was probably not a whole second, just enough to be noticable.

Thank you, I never expected to get this many replies.:)
 
I have aways thought of Audacity as more useful as a simple wave editor. Reaper is multi-tracking software. It depends on what you are looking for. I use both, well I use Wavelab now instead of Audacity, but I use ot for the same types of things...

As far as price, functionality, ease of use, etc... the home recordist is gonna be served pretty well by Reaper.
 
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