Joepie said:
Hi all,
Another newbie trying to get his problem solved. I've just started fiddling
around with Sonar 3 on my new PC (amd athlon 2500 with standard 5.1 sound card) and when I try to record a guitar track it's out of sync with my MIDI drum track. There's a lot of talk about "latency" on this forum. I'm not sure if I've got the right term here, but I guess this is where my problem lies.
In the SONAR Audio menu there's a lot of options with buffers, timing offset etc. What settings should I use to get this problem fixed? Does this depend on my CPU speed or my sound card? Hope you guys can help me. Thanks,
Joep
We have been able to record a vocal against a MIDI track with no latency problems using only Sonar Homestudio XL 2004 (though I think freebie Audacity would have served as well, except it doesn't do MIDI sequencing that I know of), using a SoundMax integrated sound card and
a M-Audio DMP-3 preamp.
I had no problems at all. My tracks matched perfectly.
So, while I probably cannot tell you what to do to fix it, I might be able to help by sharing my own newbie experience. I'm pretty sure your problem is not your sound card.
How are you "monitoring" while laying down your guitar tracks?
From which of the possible inputs from your sound card are you recording (line in, aux, mic in, or whatever)? I'm pretty sure that would be set at your sound card's mixer.. usually that little speaker in your PC's system tray, not within your digital audio software. How familiar are you with setting the recording source? Maybe you know all about this and I'm being a pain, telling you the obvious, so let me know if you need to know more about the system or soundcard's mixer and setting recording source.
Also, when you say "out of synch" could you give more detail? Is the whole guitar track later or earlier than the MIDI, or are there places where it seems to get out of synch even though it starts out aligned?
I learned one thing early on, when mixing MIDI and audio tracks: I have to set my latency within my Homestudio to none when laying down MIDI (so I hear the note I play as soon as I play it, instead of having a waiting period to get the tone in my ear). But when laying down audio waveforms... I have to set it to maximum latency or, no matter that I now have a really fast computer, I get digital noise even while monitoring the recording. But this is strictly for recording. When it comes to playback, latency doesn't seem to matter.
But, when I play the MIDI and analog tracks back together: perfectly aligned.
We now use a MIDI cowbell beat as a click track for all our recordings... with tempo changes... so our beat is really even and consistent, and have no problems at all with that synchronizing...
I really think this is a setting issue, not a need to buy more stuff. Could it be that you're hearing the mix at the wrong time so it sounds fine while recording, but on playback the two track are off by a slight amount?
There are a zillion possible settings and I figure I'll be working at this for the next thirty years to understand them all and how they interact! But, hey, it's a fun way to spend the next 30 years, I like struggling with technology (sick woman).
