Latency

C

CelesteMac

New member
I’ve been recording often in recent months, several times a week, with my little set up and suddenly today I started having a problem. No idea why.

I’m using Garageband 11 with a Focusrite 2i4.

I’m not sure if I’m using the right terminology here, but:

When I monitor the input directly, it sounds normal. So I can record that way, which is fine. But if I mix any of the output, I get a big latency problem in my headphones. The recording itself sounds normal, it’s just the monitoring that is a problem. I can’t even tell if I’m on pitch.

As I said, I’ve been recording regularly without this problem. So yes, I can record and monitor the vocals dry. But up until today I had the choice to hear some reverb if I wanted to. Now suddenly, I no longer have that option.

Any ideas?

Thanks much!

ETA: recording vocals with an MXL 3000 condense mic
 
Hey,
That's what the direct option is for. When your monitor playback through the computer, especially with effects, there'll be latency.
The amount of latency is governed by your buffer size settings, but there'll always be some amount.

Garage band is limited software, though. I don't see an option there to alter buffer settings, so hopefully the 2i4 has some control panel you can look through? Maybe it has buffer size settings?

Hope that helps.
 
According to the Focusrite website, on a Mac, the buffer size is set in the DAW. Which means that with GarageBand I guess there's no way to change it.

Wish I knew why this is suddenly a problem today. Whatever the factory buffer size is on the 2i4, it was working well with I've been doing. Sigh.
 
Hmm, it's odd that it's changed then.
Have you introduced a new plugin in the chain? Each plugin introduces more latency and some add more than others.
A lot of waves plugins, for example, introduce so much latency that tracking with them 'live' is just impossible.
 
I haven't changed anything. Just opened a file I was working on as per usual. I wonder if Macs do some memory management in the background that could affect GB. I'm not opposed to upgrading. It's just a matter of finding the time to invest. It would be fun to have a better DAW.

My needs are pretty simple. I record practices so I can listen to my work later with a cold ear. And I record songs to share with other musicians for networking, or for example, if someone is learning a song to perform with me. I'm always working on getting stronger as vocalist and the recordings help tremendously. So I can live with recording dry. It's not like I'm dead in the water (like I was the last time you helped me!). But I find that a little reverb when I'm recording seems to loosen me up a bit. Kinda like a bourbon on the rocks, lol.

Thanks for your help!
 
Try recording with the reverb plug in disabled and see if the latency still arises.

Or maybe there was a background task running that hogged most of your CPU (e.g. a virus checker kicking off or something).
 
I tried shutting everything down, restarting, opening a new blank project with no effects. But no luck. At the time the issue first cropped up, there may have been some CPU hogging going on. Hard to say.
 
No offence to HR or its great band of bros but. Pop over to Sound on Sound forum and post this in the mac section.

The 2i4 is not NOTED for low latency performance but then I have never read anything really bad about it.

I am a PC man so cannot comment about macs but latency is first the preserve of the interface, next and almost if not AS important the drivers (macs don't use ASIO iirc?) and then quite a long way down the list is PC performance. Modern computers (all of them) are unlikely to be underpowered unless you throw in a load of plugs or something else is grabbing resources.

Is there a latency checker for macs?

Dave.
 
CelesteMac said:
I haven't changed anything. Just opened a file I was working on as per usual. I wonder if Macs do some memory management in the background that could affect GB. I'm not opposed to upgrading. It's just a matter of finding the time to invest. It would be fun to have a better DAW.
Click to expand...

Nothing I'm aware of.
They don't really schedule tasks and just start doing stuff.
Time Machine is on by default but you'd have to have chosen a designated backup drive - IE you'd know if it was on.

If you have anything scheduled or set up like backing up to a cloud service, backing up your phone, time capsule or something like that, it'd be worth checking.
I don't use anything like that.

Open utility manager - It'll show you how your cpu and memory usage are sitting.

I appreciate what ECC is saying but if it worked before, something's changed.
It's not going to have anything to do with drivers or interface choice.

If you want to try upgrading to something with more control try Reaper but, that said, with the information given it sounds like there's a variable you should be able to track down.
 
I do use a cloud backup. I'm not familiar with utility manager -- by chance did you mean activity monitor?

CPU is typically 90%+ idle. Memory ATM is 4GB inactive, 1GB free, 2GB active, swap used 18MB. 1TB HD is 2/3 free. Disk activity though is something of a mystery to me because it's often reading a lot of data, ATM 20GB spikes and I'm not doing anything but using Firefox. Cloud backup is not active ATM.

My iMac has been a little slower lately so it probably needs some mid-life maintenance.

I really appreciate the help, thanks.

I notice on the Focusrite site, they have the next gen Scarlett line coming out, and they are advertising "unrivaled round-trip latency... use your favourite plugins while recording – whether it’s reverb on a vocal, a guitar amp simulator, or even virtual instruments live on stage. You’ll also get the best out of vocal performances, by applying real-time comfort reverb to headphones."

Hmmm. RAM upgrade and new interface?
 
CelesteMac said:
I do use a cloud backup. I'm not familiar with utility manager -- by chance did you mean activity monitor?
Click to expand...
Oops, sorry. That's exactly what I meant. Utilites/Activity Monitor.

CelesteMac said:
CPU is typically 90%+ idle. Memory ATM is 4GB inactive, 1GB free, 2GB active, swap used 18MB. 1TB HD is 2/3 free.
Click to expand...

That's kind odd. 4gb inactive is healthy but the fact that any swap was used, even if it is just 18mb, means that you ran out of memory at some point.
At least, I'm pretty sure it does?!

CelesteMac said:
My iMac has been a little slower lately so it probably needs some mid-life maintenance.
Click to expand...

I guess it'd be worth checking your hard drive health. Download DriveDX and let it run a quick test of your primary HDD.
No other program - DriveDX gives an analysis I've seen from no other software.
It's a demo and will run out in a month or whatever, but it will tell you if your HDD is in trouble.

Memory wise, fire up a session and go about your normal work, but keep activity monitor open off to the side.
Watch CPU usage and Memory usage under load. Worth a look.

OSX isn't prone to bullshit add on software but still...Go to system preferences/users+groups/login items and see what's there.
I doubt there's anything sinister but it does no harm to check.

On the hardware side again, it might be worth downloading 'macs fan control' to see what your temperatures are like.
Don't bother tinkering with settings or anything - just open it, check temps at idle then under load.
If the machines doing it's slow routine but the temps are fine, quit and delete.
 
Hmm. The Saffire Pro 14 is only two hundred bucks and Focusrite says: "Zero-latency mixes for perfect monitoring. Included with the PRO 14 is Saffire MixControl, an 18 x 6 DSP mixer. MixControl makes it possible for you to create up to six separate mixes – without latency. Route any combination of input signals and sequencer outputs to any of Saffire PRO 14’s outputs, and use intuitive one-click configurations to help you track, monitor and mix as quickly and effectively as possible."

According to Focusrite, the Scarlett range has hardware-based controls, so MixControl is not compatible and buffer size is controlled by the DAW.
 
CelesteMac said:
Hmm. The Saffire Pro 14 is only two hundred bucks and Focusrite says: "Zero-latency mixes for perfect monitoring. Included with the PRO 14 is Saffire MixControl, an 18 x 6 DSP mixer. MixControl makes it possible for you to create up to six separate mixes – without latency. Route any combination of input signals and sequencer outputs to any of Saffire PRO 14’s outputs, and use intuitive one-click configurations to help you track, monitor and mix as quickly and effectively as possible."

According to Focusrite, the Scarlett range has hardware-based controls, so MixControl is not compatible and buffer size is controlled by the DAW.
Click to expand...

Either way it sounds like buffer sizes haven't changed...check the above stuff.
 
Steenamaroo said:
That's kind odd. 4gb inactive is healthy but the fact that any swap was used, even if it is just 18mb, means that you ran out of memory at some point.
At least, I'm pretty sure it does?!

I don't know what you'd do. They don't really require maintenance unless you've willingly set a lot of programs to open on startup or there some physical failure.
There's no go-to list of things to do like windows - defragging, virus scanning, removing startup items...They have nowhere near the same relevance or importance on mac.
Click to expand...

Re swap, I think that's what it means, not sure.

I think on Macs the preferences can get corrupted, that's one thing. I'm not sure what makes them slow down over time, but they do. Start-up is clean.
 
Steenamaroo said:
That's great but it's a bandaid.If the thing worked and now it doesn't and nothing's changed.....something has actually changed.

That may be a failing hard drive, failing memory, or simply you added some plugin and didn't realise.
Worth finding out, either way.
Click to expand...

I will try DriveDX and the other suggestions. Thank you.
 
DriveDX overall health & performance 88.3%
0 issues found

Spiin up time is 88.3%
Start Stop Count 94%
Load cycle count 99%

Everything else is 100%

=== TEMPERATURE INFORMATION (CELSIUS) ===
Current Temperature : 51
Power Cycle Min Temperature : 27
Power Cycle Max Temperature : 51
Lifetime Min Temperature : 35
Lifetime Max Temperature : 61
Recommended Min Temperature : 0
Recommended Max Temperature : 60
Temperature Min Limit : -41
Temperature Max Limit : 85

=== CURRENT POWER CYCLE STATISTICS ===
Data Read : 19.3 GB
Data Written : 3.0 GB
Data Read/Write Ratio : 6.54
Average Throughput (Read) : 8.6 MB/s
Average Throughput (Write) : 4.8 MB/s

Operations (Read) : 186,266
Operations (Write) : 83,556
Operations Read/Write Ratio : 2
Throughput per operation (Read) : 108.9 KB/Op
Throughput per operation (Write) : 37.1 KB/Op

Latency Time (Read) : 0 ns
Latency Time (Write) : 0 ns
Retries (Read) : 0
Retries (Write) : 0
Errors (Read) : 0
Errors (Write) : 0
 
OK, I guess that's one down.
The GUI is usually pretty good about flagging up scary things. That sounds fine. :)


So - swap file next.
This is the same as page file on MS OSs. If your computer runs out of memory, it pushes some things out of memory into page file to make room for current tasks.
It's just allocated hard drive space - Waaay slower than actual memory.
So if you're ever getting into swap file use, it's bad news and time for more ram and, usually, you'll know about it.

That said, 18MB is nothing. It sounds like your machine has 8GB ram right?
So that's kinda strange. I don't think I ever got to using a full 8GB ram on my old laptop and I was running very heavy sessions in ProTools.

Anyway - Open a session, do your think, and watch memory usage. See how high it gets. :)
 
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