Latency Question. Help Please.

NLAlston

NLAlston

New member
Hello.

I had not too long ago, purchased Reason 6, and finally got the chance to sit down with it and try a bit of recording. My controller is the EMU XBoard49 - of which I have no issues with. Latency is not even the slightest problem, with it. However, I use my Focusrite Saffire 6 USB Audio Interface for my vocals, of which I AM experiencing problems with. I don't care how I try adjusting the knobs, there is always a slight echo to my voice. No matter how tight to the music I try to sing a part, upon playback I find that my voice is always a bit behind where it should be. I have tried every single thing that I could think of, but all has been to no avail. Might ANYONE have an idea as to what is going on? And (hopefully) share some possibly corrective suggestions with me?

Many, MANY advanced thanks.
 
NLAlston said:
I don't care how I try adjusting the knobs, there is always a slight echo to my voice.
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Turn off software input monitoring and use only the hardware input monitoring provided by the Saffire.

NLAlston said:
No matter how tight to the music I try to sing a part, upon playback I find that my voice is always a bit behind where it should be.
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This is a slightly different problem. In my DAW it's called "record offset" but it's sometimes referred to as "record latency" or other things in other DAWs. I would hope there's an adjustment for this in Reason but I don't know that software.
 
Use nudge to line up the vocal track with the rest of the tracks.

Are you using ASIO drivers with the Saffire?
 
If the hardware can't be configured to track properly what else can you do?

IHNI if Reason takes latency into account when writing to disc. AFAIK Sonar does. But I have yet to see any DAW that didn't offer solutions for aligning tracks. It's that common of a problem.

And fixing the latency issue isn't going to align tracks done previously with the Saffire.
 
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c7sus said:
If the hardware can't be configured to track properly what else can you do?
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Fix it with a software setting.

c7sus said:
IHNI if Reason takes latency into account when writing to disc. AFAIK Sonar does. But I have yet to see any DAW that didn't offer solutions for aligning tracks. It's that common of a problem.
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Exactly. I'd be surprised if a decent DAW didn't have some software setting to handle this automatically without having to nudge every freakin' take.

c7sus said:
And fixing the latency issue isn't going to align tracks done previously with the Saffire.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for that you'd have to nudge, but unless the takes were super fantastic and unrepeatable you could just retake stuff and have the timing be 100% right. It's hard to say which would take more time and effort.
 
If the track is in time and just out of sync it's not that much work.

The ASIO driver should take latency into account and Reason should automatically sync to it. Maybe that is the underlying issue--- Reason is syncing to something other than the audio input. In Sonar it is referred to as "Full Chase Lock" and that mode is recommended for syncing to MIDI Time Code, but you still have to select the timing master for the audio input. There is another mode called "Freewheel" that syncs to interfaces with Word Clock. In Sonar it's two different pages of menus. The driver setting page selects the analog input/output timing masters and the sync page selects freewheel or full chase lock. Reason should have something similar for syncing audio I/O with MIDI loops and MTC.
 
It's not a syncing issue. The input and output of the interface are on the same clock so they are synced. A sync error would result in drift. Manually nudging tracks isn't hard but it is subjective, imprecise and, for me at least, a distraction from what I should be doing in a session.

It's an offset issue. New tracks are offset by a fixed amount so the software isn't compensating correctly for the time difference between output and input. It should be a simple one time fix once the right menu is found, and the the OP will never have to deal with it again.
 
Well, that explains it pretty well with specifics for Reason. But I would have thought the guy doing the video would get the audio level right so I don't have to crank the heck out of my PC speakers to hear it.
 
Thanks, to every single one of you - who responded. I have just returned home, and am about to check into that Youtube Video Tut that I was given a link to. C7sus had queried as to whether or not I was using an ASIO driver, and the answer to that is yes (Focusrite USB ASIO driver). But let me share what I had attempted to do, which may serve to shed some additional light as to the whys & wherefores of my dilemma.

I am looking to compose some songs, for my singing group, and was trying to do some test recordings to (kinda) get my feet wet with Reason 6. As I had no available original compositions, at this particular time, I imported a MIDI file to use as my backing tracks. I then inserted 3-Audio tracks, by which to lay down a 3-part harmony background. Had it not been for the delayed sound, all would have traveled reasonably well. Now, I don't know much at all about computer recording but, I wonder if there might have been some type of time differences due to the fact that the sequencer was dealing with MIDI and Audio? Is it possible that I might not have experienced what I have if the tracks had been ALL Audio?
 
I have attached two snapshots of my driver panel boxes, to show what the default settings are. I don't know what to change - if indeed anything should be changed, so any help here would also be very much appreciated.

Again, a HUGE thanks to all - for even trying to help me out.
 
I don't know what happened, but it appears that my two attachments failed to attach, despite the fact that they showed up, properly, in the Manage Attachments area.
 
Oops. I see, now, that I had to be logged out of my account in order to see that the files were, indeed, attached.
 
The attachment thing has been dodgy today for some reason.

Make sure you are using the ASIO drivers. Reason should automatically set the amount of offset. If it doesn't you can manually set the offset to match the amount of samples that the ASIO panel reports.
 
c7sus said:
The attachment thing has been dodgy today for some reason.

Make sure you are using the ASIO drivers. Reason should automatically set the amount of offset. If it doesn't you can manually set the offset to match the amount of samples that the ASIO panel reports.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am indeed using the Focusrite USB ASIO driver. But could you outline how I can go about setting/matching the Offset amounts in Reason? I have NO clue how to do that.
 
c7sus said:
It should be similar to the method explained in the video.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I got a bit confused because of something that wasn't enabling itself for change. I saw how the guy in the tut was moving his 'Buffer Size' slider, but mine was grayed out. The slider button was sitting at the extreme left of the range (at 512 samples), and could not be moved at all. Other information was shown as follows:
........................................................
Sample Rate: 48,000
Input Latency: 23ms
Output Latency: 33ms
Recording Latency Compensation: 0-ms
External Sync Offset: 33ms
........................................................

One thing that I WAS able to change (and thought that it might help) was the monitoring choice. The choices were Automatic, Manual & External. The latter was the only one that offered the ability to remove Reason from the monitoring field.
 
Try this.

Reason 6 Fundamentals - Setting up your audio card - YouTube

Set your buffer size to 256 samples. If you have audio dropouts increase the buffer size.

Set the recording latency compensation to match the input latency reported for the buffer size. Leave the automatic monitoring function engaged. As it says in the video, shut off any inputs you aren't using to reduce input latency. Try doing a few takes and see if these settings work out to place newly recorded tracks in sync with existing tracks. You may have to fiddle around with this. The video shows a couple little buttons to adjust the latency compensation. Are those grayed out?
 
Here's how I measure record latency: Set up a track with snare or something, send it out of the interface, loop it back in, record it to a track then look to see how far off it is from the original. With that number I can set the compensation.
 
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