Recording "Lag" issues

[pnrule]

Hello,
I am trying to make some very basic entry level recordings of my band with my computer and a couple mics. Due to the hectic acoustics of our playing room and different people available at different times, we are recording each part separately. I can get the recordings to sound very nice, in fact nicer than I was hoping for, however, there is an issue.

We all record to a click track, but when I load up all 4 files in Audacity it is like they were saved at a different speed.

I can line them up and they sound perfectly in sync for 20-30 seconds, but then they grow gradually more and more out of sync.

I am not sure what the particular cause is, I can think of a few different ones but I really don't know.

My PC is running XP home, 1GB ram, 2.4ghz CPU.

The issue I THINK is the stock sound card.

I am running mics to a mixer then into the line in of the sound card.

What do I need to do in order to get them to LINE UP?

I downloaded reaper and have tried that and it is a mediocre amount better. I am using ASIO4All.

Is it the sound card or the old PC?

What do I need in order to get a nice, in sync recording?

I have been looking at PCI/firewire audio interfaces but I am not sure how over or underkill one would be.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ranjam]

Firewire can be picky about the chipset used, so unless you have a killer PC, I'd stay away from Firewire. A decent USB interface will be cheaper, and you have a better chance of it being compatible. You only need a two channel if you have a mixer already. There's lots of cheap interfaces from M-Audio, Tascam, or Alesis. Plus they'll toss in another CD of editing software (usually Cubase), so you can try that alongside Audacity. I do the same thing, and in some instances I like Audacity, and other times I like Cubase. But I have a choice.

 

[witzendoz]

What is generating the click track?

If you are playing the click track from an external device, metronome, drum machine, etc it could have a slight variation at different times as it may not be digitally locked, and even a quarter of a beat a minute will be well out over a length of a song.

Did you record the click track to a track in Audacity then get everyone to play to that? If not try that.

Cheers
Alan.

 

[ranjam]

Audacity has a metronome function. I still say it's the soundcard. I'm often wrong, so if you can 'borrow' even a cheap interface, you'd know right away.

 

[TetraFish]

It sounds like you are recording on different computers, right. If so you couldbe out a hairand over time it will be out. As an example I was trying to set up a click track for an audio track that I know was recoded at 120bpm, but on my computer it ended up being something stupid like 119.765bpm to make the click line up with the track. I doubt any change in hardware is going to fix this issue.

 

[witzendoz]

It sounds like you are recording on different computers, right. If so you couldbe out a hairand over time it will be out. As an example I was trying to set up a click track for an audio track that I know was recoded at 120bpm, but on my computer it ended up being something stupid like 119.765bpm to make the click line up with the track.

That was the reason I suggested actually recording the click track. In my studio I have a click track set up on a computer that only runs midi, it is synced to the recording computer via smpte timecode. However I always record the click track on it's own track as we lay down the drums (in this case but the 1st instrument) so 1, if there are any syncing problems later we still have a click, 2, we don't need to set up the click track again for future recording or even remember the tempo.
Cheers
Alan.

 

[ranjam]

Is there a chance in Hell the two computers have different hard drive spindle speeds? What if the RAM is low on one computer, and it is using virtual RAM? Are there a lot of plug ins happening at the same time?