Does latency compound?

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travelin travis

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Every since I got BFD, I've had a problem creating drum patterns in perfect time; my timing always seemed shifted forward a bit. I just ran a test to see if the problem is really me or if it's a software problem.

I setup the metronome in Sonar and recorded a hi-hat, using a midi keyboard, along with the metronome. I started with a 1.3ms latency in my sound card's control panel. My timing was pretty much dead on. I then increased the latency to 2.7 ms and recorded along with the metronome.............

As I increased the latencey, my hi hat got further and further away from the metronome clicks. I started at 1.3 ms and ended at 21.3 ms. For some reason, I thought that Sonar some how compensated for latencey. I guess I was wrong.

Anyway, my question is, does latency compound? I have'nt tested how much latency is added when using effects plugins. I will do that next. I just wanted to ask if anyone knows if the latency from an effect plugin compounds with the latency introduced during recording.

I know that alot of people claim that if a sound card's latency is set low enough, the offset is'nt really noticeable. When making drum loops, I notice it quite a bit at 8ms. I mean when the loops are played back. With guitar or singing, I notice the offset while recording but not as much when the track is playing back.

Anyone have latency problems or solutions?
 
The only way that latency would compound using a plugin is if you were recording through the plugin.

If you record the drums to a click, the drums will normally be later than the click. If you record everything else to the drums, you should have no problem. Recording instruments to a click then trying to put drums to it doesn't work out very well. The other instruments are supposed to react to the drums, when they don't it sounds weird.
 
One more thing.

Latency is not just a computer thing. It takes time for signal to travel from your guitar to the amp, amp to the speaker, and the sound to travel from the speaker back to your ears. Now that we all have computers and we can zoom in on a waveform and measure one against the other, it is easy to forget that when you are zoomed all the way in, you are looking at .0001 seconds across your whole screen. Don't get too wrapped up in what you see. If you can't hear it, it's not anything to worry about.
 
Farview said:
The only way that latency would compound using a plugin is if you were recording through the plugin.

If you record the drums to a click, the drums will normally be later than the click. If you record everything else to the drums, you should have no problem. Recording instruments to a click then trying to put drums to it doesn't work out very well. The other instruments are supposed to react to the drums, when they don't it sounds weird.
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This is what I'm doing.........creating loops one bar at a time and then arranging those loops to make a drum line. It's pretty important that I do use a metronome during this, for obvious reasons. I usually make a count in loop using a hi hat, so I can ditch the metronome while recording the other instruments and just play along with the drums. Something that I noticed, which may or may not just be in my head, is that if I just record a hi hat, the timing is pretty close to being on. If I play the whole kit the timing seems to drift forward more than it does when just using the hi hat.

So, I record a 1 bar count in loop with the hi hat. Everything lines up pretty close. I then record the first drum loop of the song. The first kick and hi hat hits, the first beat of the bar, are off. Actually the whole loop is shifted forward a bit. When playing back the count in loop and the first drum loop of the song, there is a very noticeable lag before the first beat of the drum loop starts playing.
 
I really have never tried to manually line up my tracks. My problem is what I'm hearing. It's probably not noticeable to some people but it is pretty distracting to me. I suppose I will just have to figure out how to work around it.
 
Are you actually playing drums? It is normal for live drums to be late against the click. If you play exactly on top of the click, you can't hear it and will fall off. If you are trying to perform a drum part a piece at a time, it won't feel right. Latency might not be the issue, it might be the way you are relating to the click. The only way to make this work (if I understand what you are doing) is to perform the parts, then quantize what you did before you make loops out of it.

Most drum parts performed by a drummer would not loop very well, much less if you are doing each drum separately.

You might be better off programming it.
 
Farview said:
Are you actually playing drums? It is normal for live drums to be late against the click. If you play exactly on top of the click, you can't hear it and will fall off. If you are trying to perform a drum part a piece at a time, it won't feel right. Latency might not be the issue, it might be the way you are relating to the click. The only way to make this work (if I understand what you are doing) is to perform the parts, then quantize what you did before you make loops out of it.

Most drum parts performed by a drummer would not loop very well, much less if you are doing each drum separately.

You might be better off programming it.
Click to expand...

I'm playing all drums at one time via a midi keyboard and bfd into sonar. I'm trying to find a middle point between completely programming (too tedious for me) and performing (hard to get good dynamics playing on a keyboard). So, I figured making loops would be best. When making a short loop, it's alot easier to focus on the dynamics than it is when trying to peck out a whole drum line on a midi keyboard. Also, I don't have to insert every single note into the piano roll of Sonar using a mouse. I sometimes quantize the kick to keep a solid feel but usually it sounds off with the hi hat when doing so. I could also quantize the hi hat but then it sounds too much like a drum machine. Midi drums are a pain in the ass! :D
 
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If I read that correctly, you are adjusting settings to manually increase the latency.

You want the latency to be as low as possible, not high.

Leave it at 1.3ms latency or less if possible.
 
:rolleyes: ............. :D

I was increasing the latency just for testing. I normally run at 5-8 ms. 1.3 ms is too hard on my computer. I might be able to run 4 tracks with plugins at 1.3 ms.
 
See, here's the thing. When you increase latency, and play a virtual instrument, the time between when you hit the key and hear a sound will increase. As you will automatically react to what you're hearing to play the next note, the more latency there is the more it will throw you off. So, I say, when you're recording use the lowest latency you can get away with. Once you've done the recording and you move to the mixing stage, then go ahead and increase the latency because the more latency there is the less load there is on the CPU, which in turn will allow you to use more plugins.
 
noisewreck said:
See, here's the thing. When you increase latency, and play a virtual instrument, the time between when you hit the key and hear a sound will increase. As you will automatically react to what you're hearing to play the next note, the more latency there is the more it will throw you off. So, I say, when you're recording use the lowest latency you can get away with. Once you've done the recording and you move to the mixing stage, then go ahead and increase the latency because the more latency there is the less load there is on the CPU, which in turn will allow you to use more plugins.
Click to expand...

that's typically what I do. record at 5-8 ms and bump it up as needed while mixing. for some reason, i had it in my head that sonar some how compensated for the recording latency during playback of the recorded track. :rolleyes: i get stupid shit in my head sometimes. :D
 
Plug-ins do have their own latency. Which version of Sonar are you using? For certain, Sonar 1 & 2 don't have plug-in delay compensation. Not sure about Sonar 3, Sonar 4 & 5 certainly do have it.
 
Jim Y said:
Plug-ins do have their own latency. Which version of Sonar are you using? For certain, Sonar 1 & 2 don't have plug-in delay compensation. Not sure about Sonar 3, Sonar 4 & 5 certainly do have it.
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I'm on Sonar 4. I did throw a few plugins on my latency test track, just to see if I could hear any extra latency being introduced. I could'nt really hear any but that might change with a high track count and alot of plugins running.

What sparked this whole thing was an old project file I was listening to. While recording the entire project, I kept thinking something was wrong with the drums. I know now that what I was hearing was the drums being slightly off time.

This is what worries me though. Say I record a drum line that ends up being 4 ms off time with the metronome. No big deal. The metronome won't be in the mix. Then I lay the bass line down over the drums, which will be 4 ms off from the drums. Then I lay down guitar tracks, which will be off time some more, maybe not 4 ms though because I will be hearing the drums and bass. It just seems like all this recording latency compounds. Then, maybe the plugins add some latency of their own..........It's very disturbing for me to think about it............. :eek:

Every since I've been using Sonar (which is'nt that long), there has been something not sitting right with my ears. I used Cool Edit before Sonar and did'nt notice anything strange. Maybe it's all in my head.

Maybe I should look into aligning my tracks somehow.

I hear the latency in other peoples tracks too and it sounds bad, to my ears.
 
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What will happen is the drums will be 4ms off of the click. The bass will be 4 ms off the drums, but the guitar will also be 4 ms off the drums as well as all the other instruments. Everything else will reference the drums. This is not a problem, this is normal. It happens no matter what you are doing.

The real timing problem is the way you are recording drums. You are doing the hats separately from the kick and snare. When you do that, you run the risk of your feel being different for the hats than it is for the kick and snare. It won't sound like one performance. If you have to do it this way, quantize everything. Once it is 'right', you can move the kick ahead a few ticks and the snare back a few ticks. Depending on the groove you are trying to achieve, you have to move the kick and snare in relation to the hat. It only takes a few ticks one way or the other to make this work.
 
Farview said:
The real timing problem is the way you are recording drums. You are doing the hats separately from the kick and snare. When you do that, you run the risk of your feel being different for the hats than it is for the kick and snare. It won't sound like one performance. If you have to do it this way, quantize everything. Once it is 'right', you can move the kick ahead a few ticks and the snare back a few ticks. Depending on the groove you are trying to achieve, you have to move the kick and snare in relation to the hat. It only takes a few ticks one way or the other to make this work.
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I was only doing the hi hat alone for a latency test. When I create drum loops, I play everything at one time. I can't play the parts seperately, it's too weird.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
I was only doing the hi hat alone for a latency test. When I create drum loops, I play everything at one time. I can't play the parts seperately, it's too weird.
Click to expand...
Then how would the latency jump up and bite you? If you want the drums lined up with the click, just bump them over when you are done performing them.
 
There was a problem with an earlier M-audio driver for their Delta cards where Sonar recorded each take late by the amount of buffer latency. Didn't happen with ASIO, just the default WDM/KS driver mode.
Could this be the kind of thing happening? Maybe with another brands driver?

I've seen someone in the Cakewalk Sonar forums still telling people to use this old driver (known as .27) yet this is the one with the problem I've described. You can use it, but stick to ASIO.

It can help to Re-profile your soundcard/interface in Sonars options/audio menu. With Sonar closed, set the drivers buffer to it's minimum (possibly 64 samples if available). In Sonars Audio options, pull the latency slider to minimum, make sure "buffers in playback queue" is 2, run the profiler. Then set the latency slider to suit needs as already suggested.

Try both ASIO and WDM/KS driver modes to see if there's a difference - the Latency slider has no effect in ASIO.
 
*bump* (old thread)

I was reading a bit over at gearslutz and found this thread: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=98915&highlight=latency

Who here has actually measured his/her system latency? This has bothered me since the first time I used plugins during tracking. I'm going to do some measuring tomorrow in Reaper and see what happens. I'm also kind of curious to know how stand alone daws handle latency issues. I might be wrong but in Reaper it feels like the latency wonders when my cpu is under heavy load. When will the latency be a thing of the past!?
 
I just ran the test mentioned at gearslutz and what an eye opener. Here are the results:

44.1 kHz, 256 samples buffer: 842 samples = 019 ms
44.1 kHz, 128 samples buffer: 456 samples = 010 ms
44.1 kHz, 64 samples buffer: 265 samples = 006 ms
48 khz, 256 samples buffer: 841 samples = 018 ms
48 khz, 128 samples buffer: 457 samples = 010 ms
48 khz, 64 samples buffer: 264 samples = 006 ms
96 kHz, 256 samples buffer: 840 samples = 009 ms
96 kHz, 128 samples buffer: 455 samples = 005 ms
96 kHz, 64 samples buffer: 264 samples = 002 ms

Ok now I've confused myself about how the latency may or may not be compensated for.
 
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As I understand it, latency compensation is for like say having all your plugins play in time with your music. It helps correct different latency times between software during playback, it's not overall system correction.
 
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