recording lag?

[a27thletter]

i'm just now getting into recording digitally, and i'm using this program called magix music maker. what i've found is that if i record something and then record another track as an overdub, when i play it back, the overdubbed track is always about a second slower than the original. its like i'm getting a delay on the recording. heres my setup if that makes any difference, i may have something connected all wrong.> i'm going into my mixer, the main outputs of the mixer are running into the stereo line in on the sound card, the line out on the sound card is running into the tape (rca)intputs on the mixer and i have that signal assigned to "control room" so i can monitor it via the headphone output. am i hooking something up wrong causing the lag?

 

[AlexW]

Probably not, what you're hearing is latency. It's basically caused by the converters in your soundcard and/or processing in your editor taking time to write the tracks. You can check in your setup to see if you can enable low or zero latency recording. Some programs can do it, others can't. If yours can't, you'll have to align the tracks in your editor after they're recorded.

 

[a27thletter]

is there anything i can do in my windows xp settings to reduce the latency issue? the computer in question is used for audio recording only so i want to set it up for optimal audio settings

 

[AlexW]

I'm guessing it would ba a setting in your audio program (Magix Music Maker). Not sure what your options are with it.

 

[a27thletter]

i played around with some of the settings in th emusic maker program, didnt have a whole lot. i messed around with the audio buffer rate, affected the quality but didnt do anything about the latency. will getting a better sound card help out? i did a few tweaks i found on the net to my windows and that actually made a noticable improvement but theres still about a half second delay between tracks,. the sound card i got was one i found at a computer store in the mall where i live, it supports 32bit 3d sound, but its not a high quality name brand, maybe i should consider getting another card, my brothers comp has a soundblaster in it and it doesnt seem to get any noticable latency, but then again it could have as much to do with the computer itself.