newbie Latency, Souncard Question

[Vadim]

I don't use any souncards or interface yet, the only thing that provides sound on my computer is what came with the computer when i bought it. i also have some ASIO installed like ASIO4all... I have bad latency problems, it only supports 16-Bit...
So my question is, in order to make the latency good, and have highr bit supports, what do i need to buy for my computer, ?
i use HP 1.9 GHz Celeron, 256 MB of Ram, 75% free HD space(total 50 GB) ?

 

[danny.guitar]

I don't use any souncards or interface yet, the only thing that provides sound on my computer is what came with the computer when i bought it.

I'm guessing that is an onboard sound card? If that's the case then you need to upgrade.

What are you recording that is giving latency? And what sample-rate/bit-depth are you recording at?

It's hard to tell where the latency is coming from without knowing that. But you should still upgrade your sound card.

A basic (and huge) upgrade to what you have now would be an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which goes for about $100 new. 2 analog inputs, 2 digital inputs, and a MIDI port.

But it really depends on how many inputs you need and your budget.

 

[Vadim]

I'm guessing that is an onboard sound card? If that's the case then you need to upgrade.

What are you recording that is giving latency? And what sample-rate/bit-depth are you recording at?

It's hard to tell where the latency is coming from without knowing that. But you should still upgrade your sound card.

A basic (and huge) upgrade to what you have now would be an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which goes for about $100 new. 2 analog inputs, 2 digital inputs, and a MIDI port.

But it really depends on how many inputs you need and your budget.

thanks alot for your input, Danny.Guitar
Yes I use onboard sound card. the latency is usualy.. well, not really latency but sound crackling, usually when using powerfull plug-in, or when recording ~3rd or 4th midi track, I have no problem recording and adding audio tracks unless i start using good effects...
so interface and sound card are the same thing right?
so, will USB interface help with latency and crackling?

 

[dementedchord]

you also only have 256m of ram.... you NEED at least 4-8X's that...

 

[Vadim]

you also only have 256m of ram.... you NEED at least 4-8X's that...

well, my PC has only 2 memory slots, one is used, the other one is empty...

 

[superspit]

Hi Danny,
good advice mate...and if he upgrade his RAM, things can only look up!!
Kindest regards,
Superspit.

I'm guessing that is an onboard sound card? If that's the case then you need to upgrade.

What are you recording that is giving latency? And what sample-rate/bit-depth are you recording at?

It's hard to tell where the latency is coming from without knowing that. But you should still upgrade your sound card.

A basic (and huge) upgrade to what you have now would be an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which goes for about $100 new. 2 analog inputs, 2 digital inputs, and a MIDI port.

But it really depends on how many inputs you need and your budget.

 

[dementedchord]

well, my PC has only 2 memory slots, one is used, the other one is empty...

so lose the one you got and see if your board will support 2X's 1 gig...

 

[brzilian]

I don't use any souncards or interface yet, the only thing that provides sound on my computer is what came with the computer when i bought it. i also have some ASIO installed like ASIO4all... I have bad latency problems, it only supports 16-Bit...
So my question is, in order to make the latency good, and have highr bit supports, what do i need to buy for my computer, ?
i use HP 1.9 GHz Celeron, 256 MB of Ram, 75% free HD space(total 50 GB) ?

That is a really old machine (and antiquated for DAW work). Its not worth throwing money at it anymore. A soundcard alone will not help latency. Like other people said, you would need to add more RAM.

Save up your money and get a new system. Intel Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 systems with 1Gb of RAM can be had for less than $500 at any big box retailer (BestBuy, Circuit City, CompUSA).

 

[Atom Bomb]

I was going to start a new thread but saw this and thought id repost a similar issue.

I guess more or less im having a hard time understanding latency. I grasp the concept but from what i read there are a number of contributing factors that can attribute to poor latency/ recording problems.

is there any settings like Bit depths, buffer sizes etc, that could be considered a standard setting? or is it all just trial and error with the set up i have now.

I have an HPzd8000 with Windows XP media Centre. 3.4 ghz a 1GB ram. I have a new M-audio FastTrackUSb sound card. And am Using Cakewalk Sonar 4 and Cool Edit Pro 2.0

What i am doing is dumping tracks from an older Roland VS880EX and it works .... sort of ...

but it appears as if when i go in after i get two more tracks in and i go and line them up with the click tracks, about 30 seconds in they become of of time and its frustrasting as hell.

 

[danny.guitar]

but it appears as if when i go in after i get two more tracks in and i go and line them up with the click tracks, about 30 seconds in they become of of time and its frustrasting as hell.

Are all tracks recorded at the same bit depth/sample rate? And are all the WAV files that you transferred to your computer at the same bit depth-sample rate?

I had that problem, but it ended up being a drift issue with my sound card. I don't think the FastTrack USB has those problems, but I'm not real familiar with that card.

is there any settings like Bit depths, buffer sizes etc, that could be considered a standard setting?

Usually, the most common is 44.1/24-bit. Some people record in 48/24 also.

Make sure you're using your ASIO driver. The buffer size really depends on your system. I have mine at 256 samples and sometimes 512. Your computer is a lot better than mine though so you'll need to find which one works best with your system.

 

[ez_willis]

You can't hear latency. Latency is the delay time a signal takes to go from the input to the output.

 

[Vadim]

Is it really worth using DualCore CPU?
Because i heard that if the software isn't design especially for Dual Core, you won't get the full power of Dual Core only the Half of it. So to get the benefit of CoreDuo you need to use software that is Dual core campatible, other wise only half of the cpu will be working or something like that...
How true is this?

 

[Joepie]

you also only have 256m of ram.... you NEED at least 4-8X's that...

Well, as long as you're not using 10 or more tracks at a time, you don't NEED a lot of RAM.

I have 512mb and don't get any latency problems with my audiophile 2496. An onboard soundcard will give you latency no matter how much RAM you have.

So, Vadim, if you're on a tight budget... get an audiophile 2496 or an e-mu 0404 (both are decent entry-level sound cards) and a small RAM upgrade and you're all done for $140.

If you have more money to burn, get some more RAM, an extra hard drive and look into USB soundcards.

Good luck.

 

[Vadim]

an extra hard drive and look into USB soundcards.

Good luck.

I definatly will buy a soundcard, maybe even more expensive than audiophile 2496, maybe a one with mic modeling or something that is both suitable for Vocal recording(one Channel), and guitar recording with onboard guitar modeling and effects(one chanel) and stereo chanels for Triton Studio.
but do i need to upgrade an internal HD? because I'm using also an External 200GB HardDrive.

 

[brzilian]

Is it really worth using DualCore CPU?
Because i heard that if the software isn't design especially for Dual Core, you won't get the full power of Dual Core only the Half of it. So to get the benefit of CoreDuo you need to use software that is Dual core campatible, other wise only half of the cpu will be working or something like that...
How true is this?

This isn't about having a dual core processor.

Celeron processors are Intel's value priced processors. They are cheap because they are not as efficient as a real P4/Core Duo/Core 2 Duo.

Celerons were intented for light computer use (as in surfing the web, doing email and running MS Office). They were never design for floating point math intensve apps which is exactly what DAW apps are.

XP Pro and Media Center Edition both support dual core/dual processor systems right out of the box anyways.

The fact is, you are using a system which was never intented for DAW work in the first place. Adding a nicer soundcar or more RAM is basically like throwing your money away.

 

[Doug H]

celerons are light weight, but they crunch floating piont numbers just fine. What they aren't is business cpus with fat pipes and big caches. DAWs can stress just about every part of the cpu depending, so more is always better. Still a 1.9 celery isn't that bad a start if you ask me, are you running into mixing problems?

If you are having letency issues it's because your are hearing the sound a split ssecond after your DAW application has sent it to the sound card. A small buffer on the sound card is required because since your computer is doing many things at once it can't be relied upon to deliver a steady stream of audio data in real time. Buffer size is usually 5-20 ms (256-1024 samples @44). If your software doesn't have a setting to adjust for this you're basically screwed. You may be able to adjust the sound card buffer to be very small so it's not very noticable but you risk pops and click during playback. More ram or a faster cpu won't solve this but it may make things run a bit smoother allowing for a smaller buffer setting.

 

[Joepie]

but do i need to upgrade an internal HD? because I'm using also an External 200GB HardDrive.

Depends on the speed of the external drive.

It's always a good idea to have two hard-drives when recording. One for running the program, and one for writing/reading your sound data. You wouldn't want to get glitches in your tracks because your hard-drive has to skip back and forth looking for program files. So... ideally you could use your external to write your data, but I'm not familiar with the speeds of external HD's. Make sure it's at least 7200rpm/8mb and you should be ok, I suppose.

 

[beezelbubba]

well, my PC has only 2 memory slots, one is used, the other one is empty...

You do not NEED4 to 8 times that!I'm getting by just fine with 512 and have gotten by just fine on 256!A gig or more ram would be swell, but it is not a show stopper!

 

[travelin travis]

getting along fine here with my old 1.4 amd and 768 mb ram. unless you're running alot of tracks and alot of plugins, you don't need a kickass system. ram is cheap, a new system is not. if you have the extra cash, a newer system will speed things up for you but it's certainly not required.

as far as celerons go > when i set my mom's home pc up for her last year (celeron 2.4, 256 mb ram) i loaded up a 24 track session with a bunch of plugins just to see, and it handled it fine, considering ( i had some time to kill).

i run bfd, a couple of amp sims, and a handful of plugins at 6ms latency here on my crappy box. it really comes down to what you will be doing and whether you want to achieve it in the fastest amount of time. dementedchord, you're a dumbass.

 

[Vadim]

mostly i get this latency and sound crackling/popping in Reason 3.0 or FL studio.

When I play the stuff back i change the Latency/Audio buffer slider all the way to the right, and it plays ok.

But when recording its impossible to record with a lot of latency, because i'll go out of rhythm and stuff, so i move the slider as much as possible to the Left, and its ok for first 2 tracks, but than on 3 or 4th tracks i get this crackling, so i'm forced to move the audio buffer to the right, wich fixes the crackling but notes that i play are late.