Recording/Monitoring latency - Hardware Solution?

[Guitarman_Bob]

Hi,
I could use some advice? I am a songwriter and record all my own vocals and instruments via either Cakewalk Sonar X3 Studio or Samplitude Music Studio. I have a high level pc with 16gb RAM on Win 8.1 with a Creative Xfi soundcard. I have been using a cheap and cheerful Alesis USB mixer and ASIO4All which allowed me to record a track on Cakewalk while listening to the other tracks in the project, lets call it hardware monitoring, and latency was not an issue.
I now need high quality recording for a publisher but discovered that the Alesis mixer was poorly insulated and produced a high whine which I couldn't even hear sometimes. I now have a new Peavey PV6 which is quiet and very good but I can only monitor while recording via software (Cakewalk by switching on Track Echo for the track being recorded). It works technically but the latency is very off-putting and ends up with the timing going out the window.
Any ideas? Do I need an interface to provide direct monitoring? I have a smallish budget and I can also still return the Peavey if there is anything else that will act as an interface and mixer combined.

I'm sure this is basic stuff but I couldn't find it in other posts, apologies.

Thanks,
Bob

 

[gregoryg]

Yeah I can relate. Years ago I used Cakewalk without an interface, direct into soundcard, and the latency issue basically ended any attempts to overdub multiple tracks. One day, I managed to solve it. I downloaded ASIO4ALL and messed with the settings, mainly cranked the buffer all the way down. Latency was minor enough to record without any issues from a performance standpoint and any really precise parts were able to be nudged a millisecond here and there as needed. Be warned, cranking that buffer down makes your CPU work harder. I want to say going below 256 had my old laptop at the time get unstable, even crashed once or twice. But yeah, look into ASIO4ALL, it's free, and you should solve your problem in the driver's buffer settings.

Edit: I'm not saying ASIO4ALL is the best greatest most amazing driver in the world, so before anyone goes bonkers, I'm just relaying a fix I found years ago. It worked for me so I researched no further at the time, so there are possibly better alternatives out there. Ultimately, the real solution is to get an interface with no-(low)-latency monitoring.

Edit again: I'm confused, it looks like you are already running ASIO4ALL, or you were before but now you are not? Can you explain your current signal path and plug ins? Sorry.

 

[TimOBrien]

#1: Get rid of the Creative gamer card and get a real asio soundcard/interface.

(asio4all is a nice hack but it only emulates low-latency asio and you're fighting cheap chips on the gamer card.)

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Tim's right, the best solution is to get a proper audio interface.

But you can use the PV6 for tracking with zero monitoring latency. Connect the Tape Out and Tape In connections on the back of the unit to the sound card, set the Tape to CTRL/HP switch to on and the Tape to Mix switch to off. You can listen to the existing tracks plus the live tracks through the headphone output while recording just the live tracks through the main output.

 

[ecc83]

Hi Bob,

Yes ditch the (not!) Creative*!

Since you have all the other stuff in place it seems and your MO sussed I suggest you just fit a better soundcard.

The M-A 2496 will give you excellent sound quality and very low latency but are becoming increasingly hard to find, very good value.

The M-A 192 is a better card with balanced I/O, more expensive and rarer (well, rocking horse droppings actually!).

Then there is this ESI - Juli@ XTe
Has the advantage of being PCIe and thus future proof a bit since many MOBOs now come without PCI slots at all.

If you decide to go nuts and start again with a dedicated AI, Google the NI KA6. You won't get better, certainly in terms of low latency unless you can spring for RME or MOTU kit!

*Download Revo ininstaller and Ccleaner and run them to clean out all that S(of a)B ***t.

BTW. Have Cakewalk (X1 ess') hate it, never use it. Have various Samplitudes. Love 'em!

Dave.

 

[mjbphotos]

Return the Peavey mixer and buy a USB Audio Interface. I assume you still have the Alexis for any future mixer use you have. The high pitch whine you got on the USB feed of that is a direct function of the A-D converter and happens with most inexpensive USB mixers. On my Mackie ProFX, keeping the USB level control below 12 o' clock solved that issue.