Realtime Monitoring (w Reverb) of Live Sound

[flourish]

I would like to record guitar playing and singing at the same time with the following setup:

AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz Processor (200 MHz Front Side Bus)
128 MB RAM PC133 (SDRAM, Intel PC SDRAM unbuffered DIMM specification)
M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card
M-Audio DMP3 preamp
30' 5-in-1 KVM cable, 30' power cable
MXL 990 and 991 mics
N-Track Studio 4 (unregistered so far...)
Audio Technica ATH-M30 headphones

I am trying out N-Track because of the community here. It seems easy to use except for audio track splicing. So, there is:

Me and my guitar > MXL 990 > Preamp > 30' Stereo Patch Cable > Stereo Y Cable to Dual RCA > Audiophile 2496 > N-Track < Audiofile 2496 < Stereo Y Cable to Dual RCA < Headphones

I've got the computer in another room with the help of the 30 foot cables, so computer sound is not a problem. I want to get powered monitors (and a new computer for that matter!, but for now, this is what I've got)

1. When "live" recording, I can't seem to listen to what is being "amplified" into the computer. I have to press stop and then play it back to hear what it sounds like. I would like to use N-Track's reverb feature on my vocals just a touch while I am singing. Hearing myself while singing will enhance my performance. How can I accomplish this? I realize latency is an issue with a computer, but I was hoping my recently-purchased Audiofile 2496 sound card would solve that issue.

2. Also, how can I best mic myself and the guitar onto separate tracks while playing simultaneously? I realize there will be some bleedthrough, but I am not sure how to position myself to the mics, as the MXL 990 seems to pick up every little sound (hey, it's a condenser mic!)

3. If I were to get powered monitors, does it come with cables that have 2 (left/right) male RCA connectors? Or, will I need the Y-cable for those as well?

Any advice? If I could get rolling with this system, I would be very happy. I need my music to keep me moving forward...

-flourish

 

[minofifa]

hey flourish....

basically, your problem is not enough juice. with such little ram and low processing power, you are gonna have a hard time with software monitoring in real time.

As far as i understand, if you want to hear what you are playing in real time, you need to monitor the mix, whether this is hardware or software monitoring. hardware monitoring (via a DSP chip) is nice because it does the monitoring on its own processor, whereas software monitoring (what you want to do) requires cpu power. This depends on the features of your computer including the drivers you use for your soundcard, processor power etc.

I tried software monitroing with my lap top (1.7ghz pentium IV and 512 RAM) and i still had a lot of latency in real time, which did not work for me. I switch over to hardware monitoring. If you want to try to software monitor, the recording softare you are using has to support it, i don't know if N-track does or not.

as far as recording your guitar and vocalls on separate tracks, the best thing to do is record your guitar first (with a metronome in your headphones) then record your vocals in a new track while playing the guitar track back through the headphones. .