Cubase/Live! Latency

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Delves
  • Start date Start date
J

John Delves

New member
I have a problem with recording on cubase that maybe one of you has seen before. I want to use my rig to multitrack record mostly guitars bass etc and have a problem with the tracks staying in time. I record one track to the click and it sounds fine. I then record a second track. Then when I play them back together they start out in sync but slowly they end up totally out of time and sounding horrible. I've tried to change the sync settings tried detect buffers. I've changed channel memory size and sample input/output options. I tried to change vcache and virtual memory and all the other options I can think of but all that did was make me fail the sync test. I tried to change buffer sizes but couldn't find a happy number and changing to 48000 from 44100 for sampling rate didn't work. My setup is a P3 500 running win98se w/ 128m RAM. My soundcard is a Soundblaster Live! which I know isn't the best but I see other people using it and it works. Kinda loosing faith and I'd sure like to get back to making music instead of screwing with my computer all the time. Any help would be MOST appreciated. Thanks.
 
Check your settings under "tools" "system" within Cubase. What is in there? I'm not sure what you should be using, maybe DirectX, play with those settings and see if it helps. Also, under start.. programs.. steinberg.. mmesetup (something like that), there are a lot of settings in there that are important.

Sorry I can't give exact info, but there are so many configurations.
 
Try the multimedia driver under tools.. system within cubase as well.
 
I have the multimedia driver in setup as the Direct X is for playback only. I tried changing the channel memory and buffer sizes as well to no avail. My latency is 746ms (is that too high and if so what do you do). I've tried changing from audio sequencer to virtual tape recorder and that didn't work either. Sample position is on output and full duplex is on. Start i/p first is off(tried on too, didn't help). Thought Cubase would be better that a multitracker but maybe I should go with Samplitude 2496 or something instead. The only thing Cubase offers for what I'm doing that the multitrackers don't have is a metronome so I don't have to record a click track. Hate to give up on it but I gotta get this stuff down on 'tape'. Too bad, program looks cool. I'll try any ideas you have. Thanks for the replys, guys, I'll be watching the posts.
Later.
 
I have the same set up as you do computer wise. The only difference is that my sound card is the Layla. I have a sound blaster card that came with the computer but I don't use it. I thought Layla would fix my rythme but no such luck. I don't know if it can talk in Win98. The mag.adds said '95 but I just got my computer in Dec and 98 was the deal. I just want to know are the snyc problems with the card or the Vst. Maybe Cubase has a stuttering problem with windows I don't know but I don't have the big bucks to be buying audio cards and midi recorders! ittyl Blibbers
 
John, under system settings where you select number of tracks and such, you should see where you can select 24 bit recording and plugin delay compensation (if you have vst v 3.5 or later I believe. Anyway, click plugin delay compensation and try that when recording. See if that works... I had same problem when I started, but now I don't because of that simple little feature.
 
It's been a few days, so I guess by now you must have tried changing every option you can.

I don't have a Soundblaster Live! but I can tell you how I'm set up. For sync reference, I use "Sample position - Input". Just below that, I have all of the card options checked. You should try changing "Start Input First" or "Open all devices belore Start". I use the multimedia driver for the ASIO device. I tried the DirectX driver but it doesn't work right in my case and may not in yours. The latency is lower for the DirectX driver, but that's no help if the driver doesn't even work right. Anyway, I never worried about latency. As long as you monitor from a mixing board, or from the sound card's input, it's not a problem. At least it hasn't been for me.

If all else fails, check out this site:
http://www.studio201.com/cwu/

Here's a tip from that site that may apply to your problem:

When recording a audio track it's best to have one playing first. This helps force your soundcard to sync with your cards output instead of it's unreliable input. Record a silent audio track (about 30sec. or more) and paste it on a track anywhere before you start recording. Make sure the silent track starts playing before you start recording audio (and continues playing at least past the first 10 seconds of your recording).

You can use this same silent file repeatedly in different songs. But remember not to mute it, or it wont work.




[This message has been edited by JimH (edited 05-11-2000).]
 
goto audio>system and change the sample rate to 48khz
I can't remember the exact wording but I had read before that the SBLive initially records at 48khz but if you have your sample rate set at 44khz, it has to convert and therefore results in the timing loss.
 
Thanks for all the help. I've tried everything you've suggested but to no avail.
I couldn't select 24 bit or plug in delay compensation (too old a version I guess).
I've been doing my recording on Samplitude 2496 and editing with Sound Forge 4.0 with good results. I make my click tracks with a steinberg BBox drum machine which works good.
I can record a track in Cubase and take it and put it into Samplitude but that's all it seems any good for for me. Kind of disappointed and not going to recommend it to anybody, definitly has some glitches and I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out. Anyways thanks again for trying and I'll still try any new ideas.See you in the forums.
Later.


[This message has been edited by John Delves (edited 06-05-2000).]
 
Check this out: i have a Pentium 4 3.06 GHZ, 512MB ram, edirol usb I/O box and cubase sx and still the tracks are out of sync I dont know what to do! What ticks me off is I have zero latency audio hardware and a good brain in the computer yet still syncronization becomes a problem. It makes me irate that I this expenisve software needs me to manually drag the tracks and line them up. I think its bull. there has to be a solution. after all it is multitracking software.
 
this may be a dumb question, but i've seen it before:
check out options - synchronization...
is all your outputs enabled on "sync out"? and if your soundcard is asio 2 compatible, you might wanna try setting the sync source to asio... this is important since, although your midi reference is audio clock, cubase will route this to mtc...
 
I dont know how well they work but, these 2 groups have asio drivers that are supposed to work with SB Live!

ASIO4All- http://michael.tippach.bei.t-online.de/asio4all/

KX Project - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1


What I exeperienced myself with the kxproject driver is that it didn't work with my PC which is a Dell, then i read on their site that dell's SB Live cards have something diiferent about thier build that causes it not to work with the driver. I had hell getting my SB to work properly even after uninstalling the kx driver.

Sooo... If u have a Dell Dont Do it!
 
I dont use Cubase, check in the options menu can you select TCP/IP sync latency adjust options? to plus/minus offset samples to compensate for delays in the network transmission and diff .. in the sound card latency? The program Sawstudio has this option to help tighten the sync.

Not all programs work good with all sound cards/drivers. Maybe go to a forum where people who use Cubase can tell you what kind of soundcards work good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top