Getting rid of latency?

[jumpmanjr]

Hi, I'm a noob.

In the past I have done my multitrack recordings using the tascam portastudio 07. It did a good job but it was always a pain recording to tape because I had limited takes before it would sound crappy.

I am switching over to the digital world of recording and need some help. I have done some recording using Vegas 5 and had significant problems with latency. First off, I should mention that I have a soundblaster live card and am running windows xp at about 800 kHz with 512 MB ram. When I do recordings through the mic in line, the latency is quite high... usually over 100 ms. When I use midi, the latency is not bad from track 1 to track 2 but by the time I lay down track 3 and 4 the latency becomes an issue again.

What would you recommend? Should I get a delta 44 or delta 1010? Would that replace my current sound card? I notice that these cards don't appear to have an output to go to my cheap computer speakers... did I miss something?

Thanks for the help and sorry for noob question.
Peter.

 

[manning1]

jumpman.
latency often is nothing to do with your recording software.
its often a function of set up and the soundcard you use.
particularly consumer type soundcards.
demo an maudio delta series soundcard sometime.
please search underr my name. ive posted lots of configs and tips in the past on hear including how to monitor off soundcard output by using a second mixer or cass deck.
if your using the live at 44.1 try 16 bit 48 k.
peace,

 

[tamias]

To be fair, the latency your talking about it is: the time that elapses between a hardware device issuing a hardware interrupt, and the time the process that deals with it is ran.
It has more to do with interrupts than soundcards. I have just purchased a dual processor and will be using a Linux OS to compile my digital recordings. I think as long as you have a full duplex sound card you should be ok. Latency is something besides the signal going into your card.
Best of luck!!

 

[hueseph]

To be fair, the latency your talking about it is: the time that elapses between a hardware device issuing a hardware interrupt, and the time the process that deals with it is ran.
It has more to do with interrupts than soundcards. I have just purchased a dual processor and will be using a Linux OS to compile my digital recordings. I think as long as you have a full duplex sound card you should be ok. Latency is something besides the signal going into your card.
Best of luck!!

In this application that is true. In a situation where you are using VST's, ASIO drivers and buffer settings are also going to affect latency. On top of that, the higher the samplerate you use, the lower the latency tends to be. That being said, the higher the samplerate your card is capable of, the lower the latency your comp will be capable of. With the Delta cards, you need powered speakers which means you can mickey-mouse something with your home stereo and a mixer or you can spend money on an active monitor system. Either way if you take your recording seriously, you will need to spend some money. Keep in consideration that the Delta series do not encorporate midi into thier breakout boxes. So, you could keep your soundblaster card for it's midi capability and get a midi gameport adapter. Also you may be able to convince your daw to allow you to record from one card and monitor from another. This however could pose sync problems but not necessarily.

 

[Monkey Allen]

I used an SBLive for a fair while and never had a single problem with poor latency. Is this because of the way I record?

Basically I record one track at a time. I record a guitar. Then I record some lead over it. I can't see how latency can effect me. I mean, isn't latency basically the amount of delay as your signal passes through your system and to your headphones/ speakers?

I've often wondered in what recording environment is latency the biggest problem.

Would I be safe to assume that recording one track at a time is basically latency free?

Is latency the result of say...a largish project where you may have (for argument's sake) 16 tracks...and on playback, some of the tracks go out of sync because they have a lot of effects on them?

 

[manning1]

allen..
count yourself lucky.
latency can depend on lots of factors. just one example.
it might exhibit itself on a slow old pc bit not on a new one.
thats very fast. for example read up why an amd 64 pc can offer a lower latency experience due to the way the architecture works in engineering terms and memory control. on the other hand the best daw pc can have latency if not set up right.peace.

 

[nroberts]

I have just purchased a dual processor and will be using a Linux OS to compile my digital recordings.

The reason he would choose Linux (with regard to the topic anyway) is because the system can be set up to do real-time processing. The important audio applications that need to be low-latency are built to take advantage of this when available.

You don't necessarily need the dual proc though unless you are really going pro/semi-pro. Just home recording a single AMD64 will do great. I have a 3000+, a gig of ram, and an SB Live 5.1. I have never tried audio recording on windows, but in Linux I get 0 noticable latency. I hope to soon upgrade to an M-Audio of some kind just for the better tone and input interface.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Is that what latency manifests itself as? Many tracks trying to play back at once...but some lagging behind because of the amount of effects they have?

The more powerful the cpu/mobo/ram the better off you are right?

 

[eh91311]

SBLive asio driver

You might want to try this universal WDM/asio driver for the SBLive card:
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/down.php
I don't have a SBLive card, never used this driver, but apparently it has worked well for those who have used it. You might be able to put off buying the Delta audio soundcard for a while.

 

[nroberts]

Is that what latency manifests itself as? Many tracks trying to play back at once...but some lagging behind because of the amount of effects they have?

The more powerful the cpu/mobo/ram the better off you are right?

Latency is simply the time it takes a generated signal to get to its destination. Put into terms important to us it is the time it takes the signal generated by the plucking of a string or the vibrations in a microphone to travel down the wire, get translated and sampled into digital format, the OS to be told there is data available, the OS to acknowledge that data is available and look to see what programs are interested, the OS telling a program that data it is interested in is availbale, the program requesting access to that data, the OS giving that program control and access to read the data available (and it might have to wait while another program finishes what it was doing), the program to do what it is going to do with it, and on and on. A whole lot of shit goes on and unless it is VERY fast you will notice the difference between the time you pluck that string and the time you hear it and the time it is actually recorded. In multitasking environments this process can be interrupted at any time by other programs running on the system. This adds a whole shit load more of stuff that goes on, including context switches and the like.

What ends up happening is stuff gets lost and you get shutters and such. For instance, you are happily recording and all the sudden some program decides it wants control of the system and the OS grants it. Now your recording program is on hold. If the OS doesn't give the resource back to your recording program very soon you will actually loose some of your performance! Very soon is on the order of a few microseconds in the case of DAW work.

Imagine a water hose with water running out of it. You want ALL of the water. The water flows into a little bucket and you are using a cup to grap as much as you can as fast as you can. All the sudden someone else wants that cup. A big dude comes along and takes it from you even though you NEED it. He gives it to the other guy. Meanwhile your bucket is filling up with water and soon it will start overflowing and you are going to loose some of that water. That is basically what the latency problem is. Your performance is the hose, your CPU is the cup, you are the recording program, the big dude is the OS, and the other guy is some other program running on the system.

I don't know how Windows based DAW programs solve this problem. Linux solves it by allowing you to tell the kernel that some programs are more important than others and get whatever they damn well want when they want it at the expense of any other running programs. I don't know much more about it than that and that is a VERY rudimentary explaination because that is my level of expertise in this particular area. I believe there is also a special "real-time" scheduler that programs can make calls to. I don't know how that all works...I just know how to tell it to let me run such programs.

Yes, the more powerful the CPU is, and the more RAM you have, makes a big difference. Things go faster on such systems, but it goes beyond that really.

 

[Monkey Allen]

Good answer. I guess one way to protect your DAW while it is in use is to shut down any other programs that might want to access some of the cpu's resources. If the only thing that is running while you are recording, is the DAW, then you should be right.

I don't really think latency is a problem for a user like me who records only one track at a time. I am certainly not stretching resources in terms of the number of recorded tracks. Usually, I would only use about 8. Sometimes, because I am lazy, I will use 16 - 20 of the 32 tracks...but never are they all full all the time. I might have a 6 second grab on track 12...and that is it for that track.

I guess latency issues would really come into play for those users who do live stuff, or those users who use lots of full/ effect laden tracks.

The work I ask my computer to do for sound recording is pretty tame really...so not many latency problems for me.

I don't like to hear what I am playing through my headphones as I play it. All I do is record the rhythm, stop, play back track in headphones, balance the sound so I can hear what I am playing for track 2 outside of my headphones, and record that. That's a pretty simple process, and one that does not stretch your system too much.

I know some people like to hear what they play in their headphones as they play it. I can understand that latency issues may arise there...particularly if they want to hear that sound complete with effects while they play.

Anyway, I'm just trying to work all this out in my head for my own benifit. It's an interesting topic.

 

[noisedude]

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/s...272&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#272

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/s...271&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#271

 

[dragonworks]

Would a Mac help

 

[noisedude]

It would keep you drier in the rain for sure.

 

[MichaelM]

Just out of curiosity Tamias what software are you using in linux? Ardour?

 

[fraserhutch]

Asides from the good answers here, latency can also arise when there are other devices in the signal path such as outboard or itb processing.

Anything that requires a transducer or resampling will add latency. Some time-based itb effects and processors can add latency unless specifically designed to lookahead at the data stream.

these latencies may be small, but they can add up.

 

[FreddyG]

Latency

Hi, I'm a noob.

In the past I have done my multitrack recordings using the tascam portastudio 07. It did a good job but it was always a pain recording to tape because I had limited takes before it would sound crappy.

I am switching over to the digital world of recording and need some help. I have done some recording using Vegas 5 and had significant problems with latency. First off, I should mention that I have a soundblaster live card and am running windows xp at about 800 kHz with 512 MB ram. When I do recordings through the mic in line, the latency is quite high... usually over 100 ms. When I use midi, the latency is not bad from track 1 to track 2 but by the time I lay down track 3 and 4 the latency becomes an issue again.

What would you recommend? Should I get a delta 44 or delta 1010? Would that replace my current sound card? I notice that these cards don't appear to have an output to go to my cheap computer speakers... did I miss something?

Thanks for the help and sorry for noob question.
Peter.

Listen, I don't wanna complicate you more than u'r already. I went thru that. Just get a professional sound card (not one you connect to it thru a joystick plug) WITH ASIO compatibillity. It will solve all your troubles. Trust me. I've been there. Now I can play even 32 MIDI channels in realtime using 32 VSTs with no latency at all. Hope it helped.

Be in touch,
FreddyG

 

[nroberts]

Good answer. I guess one way to protect your DAW while it is in use is to shut down any other programs that might want to access some of the cpu's resources. If the only thing that is running while you are recording, is the DAW, then you should be right.

Well, yes and no. Certainly if your recording program is the only thing running then it will get more CPU time. However, that is never the case. You still have a bunch of services and stuff running. I don't think you can ever knock down your running programs to just one in Windows and you would be hard pressed to do it in any OS.

I don't really think latency is a problem for a user like me who records only one track at a time. I am certainly not stretching resources in terms of the number of recorded tracks. Usually, I would only use about 8. Sometimes, because I am lazy, I will use 16 - 20 of the 32 tracks...but never are they all full all the time. I might have a second grab on track 12...and that is it for that track.

It is certainly less of a problem. If you are not noticing any latency issues I wouldn't concern myself with it too much.

 

[Monkey Allen]

True. I really run the absolute minimun...I run no anti virus stuff for a start. I don't know...just the basics run in the background...just the essentials.

 

[Robert D]

Listen, I don't wanna complicate you more than u'r already. I went thru that. Just get a professional sound card (not one you connect to it thru a joystick plug) WITH ASIO compatibillity. It will solve all your troubles. Trust me. I've been there. Now I can play even 32 MIDI channels in realtime using 32 VSTs with no latency at all. Hope it helped.

Be in touch,
FreddyG

What he said......and use hardware monitoring (as opposed to SW monitoring).
RD