Catastrophic Adobe Audition Audio Sync Drift Error

C

CrazyMan

New member
**posted this in Digital Audio before I saw this group**

Hey everybody. This is my first post ever here. I've been mixing & editing audio with Adobe Audition for literally 15 years now (back when it was cool edit pro also). I use AA 1.5 because I'm used to it and it seems better than the updates.

However, I just upgraded to a new laptop with windows 7. Was using XP formerly. Now all the sudden, whether in 1.5 or 3.0 ; I am getting out of sync audio recordings that are off by a little less than a second. I tried fiddling around with the correct drift check marks and the other weird settings in there, but I can't seem to figure this out by trial & error.

I do mostly rap which is based so much on timing; and so this little drift is RUINING everything. And I can't record. I don't know what to do. I have tried a 1000 different combinations of checkmarks, buffers, & diffferent setting... nothing seems to be working. This is a disaster.
 
YOu need to double check your OS and hardware for some problems. With respect to AA 1.5 settings, you can try my multitrack settings that I set with AA1.5, you can read it here: Multi-track settings for Recording and Mixing using Adobe Audition

Sometimes, even though your DAW settings are correct; lag and drift are often caused by your audio interface/sound card drivers being incompatible with your system. That's why you need to use the updated drivers for your audio interface.

If your audio interface is ASIO supported, you can try installing Reaper and see if it sorts the problem. I have Reaper also in my PC along with Adobe Audition. Both are fully working although I use Reaper for recording/tracking and use AA1.5 for some serious audio editing work.
 
Hey, thanks for the reply. I used your values for the multitrack tab. Could you also tell me your calues for the SMPTE tab? I was fooling around with those numbers too trying to get this to work so I might of screwed them up.

As it is now, even with your values; it's still giving me a slight drift to the right by a little less than half a second. I'd hate to have to keep that "correct for drift" thing checked, since if I do a 2 minute recording, it'll take like a minute to correct the drift (which sucks when you're "on a role"). I just checked to see that I was using the updated driver for my sound card. It was the most updated from my computer manufacturers website. I have an Acer Aspire 5742G-6426 with a Realtek High Definition Audio soundcard. I went to the realtek site for an even more updated driver & installed it. but that didn't change anything.

I just tried installing Reaper, and had the same audio drift when recording in there too. I installed the Asio4all but really couldn't figure out what to do with it; the settings seemed over my head; I couldn't find any "switch to asio4all" in AA1.5.

Should I just get a new soundcard? Do you know anything about what laptop soundcards are good, and how to replace the built in one in my laptop? I would hate to use a USB soundcard as I'm afraid it might lag. I would also enjoy getting something with 5.1 surround if possible.

But mostly I just want to fix this issue. I couldn't install XP on this system either, so.... I'm basically out of luck..?
 
Well, if you're getting sync problems in Reaper too, that indicates some issue in your sound card, though I can't imagine what it could be. Sync problems like that are usually caused by clock issues but, as you're using the same internal card for both, that is very unusual.

Asio4All isn't really an option in AA1.5 because Audition didn't switch to ASIO drivers until version 2.0.

I suspect the solution would indeed be a new sound interface--and I'm afraid your option is really only USB. Built in sound cards on laptops aren't really cards at--just part of the motherboard, and they're universally rubbish. There are lots of decent interfaces out there--which one is right for you will depend on your needs in terms of number of inputs etc. One thing I'd suggest is that you look for one that offers "direct hardware monitoring" (or a similar title depending on the brand). This will let you put your voice over tracks with absolutely zero latency. Anything that depends on your voice doing a round trip via the computer for headphone monitoring is going to have lag.

Look at sound interface offerings from M Audio, Tascam, Focusrite, EMU, RME and probably others. All are good and will work fine with Audition.
 
I do have audition 3.0 ; i'll try installing that if you think there is a chance with the ASIO4all still in that program.

If that doesn't work then I'll get the new USB soundcard. I've searched for USB soundcards before and remember it being really confusing and the reviews contradicting each other. If you have any recommendation for a good card balanced between price & quality, that would be really helpful. In a perfect world I want something with 5.1 surround (3 inputs) as I have speakers for that. But in case that is too expensive, could you recommend a good 2.1 soundcard too?

Such a weird problem in that I had a 5 year old laptop that worked fine before I got this new one; and the sound card must of been worse or the same since I got this laptop as a workhorse for video & audio editing. The only difference being that the old one had XP, and this one is windows 7.
 
And no luck with 3.0 and asio4all because I get a c++ runtime error that crashes the program when I switch to asio4all. Same problem as here:

forum.recordingreview.com/f44/help-asio4all-crashes-audition-3-0-a-38732/

I'll try now to update to the current version of audition cs5.5 before i finally give up and get the USB card.
 
Got it working using asio4all with audition 5.5 , without the delay... but lots of weird glitches causing the program to freeze up when fiddling with the buffer size settings or uncheck "releas adio driver in the background. And even when it works, there is a giant noise static when recording and the volume of the input is low as well. All in all I guess my only choice is to try a new external usb sound card.
 
Will this work? Creative 5.1 usb soundcard. newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102035

It doesn't have direct hardware monitoring though...
 
The Creative sound card is designed far more for gamers than for recording--the mic pre amps are very noisy and all Creative cards do strange things with sample rates (that suit games and playback, not recording) so they're not recommended. In any case, without the monitor function, your voice will still have to do a round trip via your computer to feed your headphones and the lag will be annoying just like now.

An external card with direct monitoring should sort out your problems. From your description, I'm assuming that, to hear yourself record in headphones, your voice is going through the A to D, via your computer/DAW, then through the D to A and finally to the headphones. The beats you're working with are just doing a simply playback via the D to A and, with the different routes, they sound okay when recording but are out of sync when played back. Windows 7 is rather worse at this than earlier Windows because it tries to be too clever with sound--fine for just playing Youtube videos but useless for serious recording. Direct monitoring eliminates this round trip for your voice.

The other thing I'd normally recommend is using dedicated ASIO drivers rather than generic Windows ones. However, AA1.5 can't handle ASIO--but if you can get your AA3 working, that would be a good plan.
 
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