N
NYMorningstar
Recording Modus Operandi
Like Albert said, another 512 will improve alot. Make sure you have a second hard drive to record your audio to. They are pretty cheap these days.
B
Bulls Hit
Well-known member
Sonic Albert.......Once again, yours are the most helpful answers I get when I ask a question on this board.
Heeeeey. I said get more ram first!
D
danny.guitar
Guest
That's the best question asked...
If you have a fast enough CPU, it can help with any kind of latency. But for some kind of latency (ie: latency while monitoring with real-time effects applied) is usually because of poor (or lack of) ASIO drivers.
A good sound card with solid ASIO drivers will help with that sort of latency.
An example...my friend has a Dell Core2Duo that totally smokes my computer. But he gets latency with real-time monitoring with effects applied. He also uses a SoundBlaster Audigy or something like that.
I have a pretty poor CPU (1.1GHz) and I have no noticeable latency at all when monitoring with effects. I use an Audiophile 24/96 card.
So, for this kind of latency, you can upgrade your RAM/CPU all you want, but without good ASIO drivers you're kind of dodging the real problem...
SonicAlbert
Super-Sonic "Herb" Albert
Recording to a second drive is very good advice. Also, when running virtual instruments I split out the libs onto a few different drives.
As far as the mic and phantom power, I'm not familiar with that Soundcraft board. But for $100, it looks like a good mixer. My only question about it is regarding the "low battery" indicator. Does that mean it is battery powered only, or does it come also plug into a wall socket or have a power adapter? That might be a question for the music store where you buy it.
solo2racr
SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, BLOW
I am already using a second hard drive. Must be the one thing I have done right
I saw that "low batt" also. It also has a place for 12 volt DC in. My guess would be that you have the option.
eyema_believer
Bondservant
This is interesting. I just got a Core2 Duo with 4gb of ram, and XP pro. I'm gona hafta look and see what it thinks I have for ram.
W
warlock110
New member
it shows at ~ 3GB, because 32 bit system limitation. However when you actually uses the system, it's a bit more than 3GB, around 3.5-3.6~GB... so you only loose out on a little bit.
I picked up 4GB of ram in dual channel for 40 bucks shiped... but i still stick it in my window XP32bit... it's super cheap and it's not like i'll feel the effect of the missing RAM.
Toddskins
Member
Explain
Albert, can you technically explain why recording to the 2nd drive is advisable? How is it an improvement over recording to the original C-drive?
Thanks,
Todd
Albert, can you technically explain why recording to the 2nd drive is advisable? How is it an improvement over recording to the original C-drive?
Thanks,
Todd
altitude909
Best Advice Ever: RTFM
A dedicated drive is always good for recording since when only using one drive, any OS activity can disrupt recording or playback.
solo2racr
SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, BLOW
Will a single physical drive, partitioned into 2 separate drives, do the same as 2 physical drives? Back my old 386/486 days, I had a 1.2 gig drive that I had to partition because the bios wouldn't recognize anything over 1 gig. From what I could tell. the puter treated it as 2 separate drives in the sense that you could go as far as format one and the other wouldn't be effected.
altitude909
Best Advice Ever: RTFM
No, you want a physical drive. Just because you have 2 partitions does not mean you can access them at the same time
F
flossamatik
New member
yeah sound cards make all the difference.I purchased a lexicon alpha for $99 thereafter all my latency issues ended...
SonicAlbert
Super-Sonic "Herb" Albert
What he said.
You should also have you recording apps on the same drive as the OS. Then any time the application or OS needs to access the disc they do so without making calls on the disc that is recording.
If you think about what is in a hard drive, platters plus an arm with the read head on it, you see that the arm has to physically move around to read/write data. By dividing up that function between a couple drives you are spreading out the demand for disc access between them.
K
keith turner
azimuth of new ideas
Never said anything was crap.
In 2000 I built a 1.2ghz AMD T-bird socketA running 2.9ms latency with only 512MB RAM BECAUSE Motu writes incredibly good WDM drivers.
Your computer is not the problem,but it is your money,do as you wish.
Try lowering the ASIO buffer setting to the lowest number possible while still maintaining stability.
solo2racr
SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, BLOW
The only problem with that is that TODAYS software places a much higher demand on the CPU/RAM than 8 years ago, I'm not saying that you didn't get it down to 2.9ms back then, it's just that WinXP and Reaper I'm sure put alot more load on the system than whatever OS and other programs you were useing back than. FWIW....I didn't have any problems either with a 667mhz machine w/ 256 ram with Win98 and ProTools Free
LemonTree
Suck 'em and see!
Someone Got SOUNDBLASTERD!!!
Tha SB soundcard looks good on paper. As a recording card the latency is still gonna be 4 times more than say a M-Audio 2496 which you can pick up way cheaper than that SB card.
If you want to get zero latency when monitoring then invest in a cheap little mixer. split your mic pre and go direct into the soundcard to record and the other end into the mixer, put your soundcard outs into the mixer and plug your monitors/headphones into that.... BINGO!!!!! Zero latency monitoring.
Same idea if you have a pod for guitars or a keyboard...split the signal...one side to the soundcard and one to the mixer
and double your ram, that will give you a lot more plugin power. Use simple steps to work with lower overheads like grouping instruments and aplying a reverb to a group instead of individual instruments. Nothing eats up your plugin resources like a reverb plug does.
Good luck with it
P.S. All the bad stories about SB cards are out there because other people LIKE YOU fell into their marketing trap and threw their money away before they realised, as you are doing now.
Tha SB soundcard looks good on paper. As a recording card the latency is still gonna be 4 times more than say a M-Audio 2496 which you can pick up way cheaper than that SB card.
If you want to get zero latency when monitoring then invest in a cheap little mixer. split your mic pre and go direct into the soundcard to record and the other end into the mixer, put your soundcard outs into the mixer and plug your monitors/headphones into that.... BINGO!!!!! Zero latency monitoring.
Same idea if you have a pod for guitars or a keyboard...split the signal...one side to the soundcard and one to the mixer
and double your ram, that will give you a lot more plugin power. Use simple steps to work with lower overheads like grouping instruments and aplying a reverb to a group instead of individual instruments. Nothing eats up your plugin resources like a reverb plug does.
Good luck with it
P.S. All the bad stories about SB cards are out there because other people LIKE YOU fell into their marketing trap and threw their money away before they realised, as you are doing now.
LemonTree
Suck 'em and see!
My stripped out windows XP boots to go in 27 seconds, 11 processses running and only 62 Meg of system memory. It's not the size of the engine in your car, it's the way you have it tuned for performance
solo2racr
SUCK, SQUEEZE, BANG, BLOW
I got the card BEFORE I decided to try recording. For the intended purpose at the time, it works fine ( I loaded all my CD's onto my harddrive). They don't market it as a recording card anyway.
TimN
New member
The Soundblaster card isn't crappy, it just isn't designed for multi-track music reproduction. You do need another card, though, and more RAM. I was in the same boat as you--my old Soundblaster is still in the computer--I just can't bring myself to take it out, even though its literally just collecting dust.
VSpaceBoy
..loading
I agree, the card is fine for things other than music tracking. I have a slower PC with the same ram, running fine at 6ms latency at 512 samples.
Use the SB for games, use a Recording card for music.
Use the SB for games, use a Recording card for music.