Bleedover and effects

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VertuGoGo

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i'm getting the hang of sonar's basics, and i've noticed these two things:

first is bleedover (or something like it). let's say i have 4 guitar tracks. when i mute the first track, i can still hear it through the other 3 tracks. also, when i record additional tracks, it seems like the previously recorded tracks get re-recorded into the track i currently armed. so what happens is the track i recorded first gets re-recorded again into the other tracks, and its volume also increases. what am i doing wrong? each track is supposed to be independent of the others, right? i record in the overwrite mode btw.

second is effects. is there a way to listen to the effects as i'm adding them? the only way i can listen to the effects is as i'm playing the affected track. how can i add an effect and strum my guitar to get a preview of the effect? also, the tracks previously recorded get affected by the effect, so like when i use delay on one track, the previous tracks also get delayed and i come up with a delayed mess.

next question...sonar, audiophile, and recording with a roland v-drum kit :)
 
It's a routing problem your recording the whole mix not just the line in.
What input are you choosing in sonar and what soundcard are you using,it could have something to do with your soundcards settings.
 
VertuGoGo said:
second is effects. is there a way to listen to the effects as i'm adding them? the only way i can listen to the effects is as i'm playing the affected track. how can i add an effect and strum my guitar to get a preview of the effect?
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There is. It's called Input Monitoring - but it has its own set of problems (welcome to the wonderful world of latency).

Go to Options -> Audio and find the tab labeled Input Monitoring. Highlight your sound card in order to enable it.

Go ahead, we'll wait here while you do it, as I imagine you'll be right back with a new set of questions. :D
 
you're right dachay. this is what i did:

went to input monitoring tab, and highlighted all of the selections except for "S/PDIF" cos i have nothing connected to my S/PDIF. then again, i don't know what S/PDIF means anyway, but more on that later.

so, i picked a clean channel on my guitar and tried to play around with the delay function. yes, i can preview the effect now, but when i delete it from the track, the effect is still active when the track is armed (but not active when it is disarmed). it's funny cos even my computer sounds like the mouse clicks have delay trails.

i think the whole problem stems from what acidrock said. i have the sound card recording EVERYTHING the computer hears, not the individual track.

here's my sound card's details:

it has 6 ins and 4 outs. the "ins" i assume are multichannel 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, monitor mixer, S/PDIF, and one that just says 1/2 but can be chosen in either left, right, or stereo. i wish i knew how to do a screen cap so i can post it here for you guys to see. the "outs" are multichannel 1/2, 3/4, S/PDIF, and one that just says the name of the sound card followed by 1/2.

here's how one "in" is identified: "Left M Audio Delta AP Multichannel 1/2." for an "in" i have the "Stereo M Audio Delta AP Mon. Mixer" selected cos it's the only way i can hear my instrument and hear what i just recorded without going to my sound card's control panel and making switches.

a quick description of what my sound card's control panel looks like:

it's got a monitor mixer tab and a patchbay router tab, the only two tabs i mess with. it's got two sections on the monitor mixer tab--master volume and mixer inputs. the mixer inputs are WavOut 1/2, WavOut S/PDIF, H/W In S/PDIF, and H/W In 1/2. when i strum my guitar the meters work for all of them except for the S/PDIF ones for obvious reasons. each of the mixer inputs have these check boxes: solo, mute, and stereo link. again, if anyone can tell me how to do screen caps i'll take pics and post them so you can just look at them yourself cos i can see that i'm getting too wordy here :(

the patchbay router has only two sections not grayed out: H/W Out 1/2 and H/W Out S/PDIF. they both have these selections under them: WavOut 1/2, Monitor Mixer, S/PDIF In, S/PDIF In(L/R Rev.), and H/W In 1/2. i have the monitor mixer selected.
 
ok, done everything you suggested acidrock. my input is "Stereo M Audio Delta AP 1/2" and my output is "M Audio Delta AP Multichannel 1/2." also:

PLAYBACK TIMING MASTER/M AUDIO DELTA AP MULTICHANNEL 1/2
RECORD TIMING MASTER/SAME AS ABOVE

and lastly, my patchbay router is on monitor mixer (just like before).

now i get these two problems even before i start recording:

first, the tuner doesn't work now. the error message reads "M Audio Delta AP 1/2: The specified format is not supported or cannot be translated. Use the Capabilities function to determine the supported format." and the other problem is when i arm a track to begin recording, my guitar sound has an echo. like some sort of quick slap delay. no trails though, just that quick delay. when i disarm the track the problem goes away.

just to make sure, i changed to playback timing master from "delta ap multichannel 1/2" to "delta ap 1/2" but the same problem still happens. is my problem due to latency? what exactly is latency anyway?

oh yeah, i didn't change my S/PDIF setting since i am not using any sort of connections, so i didn't change my setting to "SPDIF In."
 
I told you you'd be back with new questions. :)

I suspect the delay you are hearing is due to having enabled Input Monitoring. It's called latency. If you want to test it, disable Input Monitoring and see if it goes away. We'll wait. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OK, you can turn it back on now. In order to get rid of the echo you need to get your latency down to around 5ms or less. This is going to depend a lot on the CPU you are running, as well as your sound card and your drivers.

Go to Options -> Audio and on the bottom of the General tab you will see a section labeled Mixing Latency. Underneath the slider you'll see Effective Latency at _____________. To get it lower, you need to slide the slider to the left. For now, you can try and slide it all the way to the left and click the button labeled Wave Profiler. Now go ahead and try and record.

We'll talk to you some more tomorrow when you let us know your results.
 
thanks very much dachay, your suggestion fixed the problem. i slid the slider all the way to the left. right now it reads "Effective latency at 44kHz/stereo: 8.7 msec." i have a 1.7 GHz P4 if you're wondering btw. you suggested that i lower my latency down to 5msec or less, but it seems that my computer is only capable of 8.7 msec. my "Buffers in Playback Queue" is set at 2--should i change that?

but everything seems to be working fine though. i can record each track independently with no "re-recording" into other tracks. i can even edit an entire track's timing so that it's in sync with the music (i got this glitch one time where a track comes in a split second after the time it's supposed to play, so i slid the entire track over to the left to match with the timing). i don't know why that glitch happened cos i made sure that when i recorded that track that i came in exactly when i'm supposed to come in. could it be that i had a delay effect on that track prior to recording, or that i used a track that's in between two tracks with contents? and i can burn the tracks into a cd for playback to cd players.

hmm, i guess i'm progressing pretty good here. thanks a lot to everyone who helped. i shall remember you in my will :)
 
To reduce your latency go to your delta mixer/hardware settings ,and reduce your buffer size.
There may be some trial and error to balance latency with dropouts and crackling/popping.
 
under DMA Buffer Size it says "Latency 384 samples." i have a selection box to change the number to 88, 128, 256, 384, 512, 784, 1024, all the way to 2688. am i fine or should i go lower? what happens anyway when i go too low (and too high)?
 
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