Recordings problems

[eugenetkg]

Hey guys. i'm new here to ask for some help.

I recently just spent quite alot of cash on a few items to start of a home recording studio. these are what i currently have:

Mic: Shure SM58
Soundcard ( Audio Interface) : Tascam US-122mkII
Wires, Mic stand and i'm currently using Audacity.
However i'm using a slightly old computer. Windows XP home edition with enough RAM and disk space ( i checked Audacity's requirement)

Problems: #1: When i record, there is this clicking sound that appears almost every 2 seconds on the recordings. #2: When i record and listen to the playback, there is a huge delay. i read that it may be the latency problem but my soundcard is set in normal latency.

Can someone help? Do i really need a better computer? Will a better computer make much difference?

Thanks in advance

 

[lightsandshapes]

are you using the asio driver?

 

[eugenetkg]

Ah yes, i've heard about the asio driver but havnt researched much about it. Care to tell me more about it? Is it a seperate thing i'm supposed to buy? Or is it supposed to be in my pc? Thanks for the reply

 

[mjbphotos]

Google 'free asio driver'

 

[eugenetkg]

Ohh. Any ones to recommend? Or are they all the same? And there's ASIO 2 is that better? After downloading what do I do? Run it and assign it somewhere?

 

[Shadow_7]

USB is going to have some latency. But it should NOT be huge. Just enough to be annoying. Beyond that it's not just the specs of the computer. You need to optimize your OS to not be doing tons of other things while you are recording. Like auto updates, virus scans, photo gallery indexing, disk defragmentation, and other things that are ENABLED by default a lot of the time. Basically if you are "allowed" to, right mouse click almost everything in the bottom right near the clock and select stop/quit/exit/suspend or whatever non-options they give you. With the exception of the actual driver for your soundcard if it happens to be there. There's also a number of services enabled by default that you could try to disable, but that's not for the meek to figure out. As some of them you DO need running. Run the cpu monitoring application. If it is showing that you are maxed, you have a resource issue. Run fewer things, get more RAM, or upgrade to a new box. Many means to an end.

Disabling networking and other things could solve the click issue. Easier said than done in windows. I get that in linux if I don't run with realtime priority, or don't bring down the computers network interfaces without realtime priority. If you have other things on that USB port, you'll want to disconnect or suspend their use while recording. USB is a shared bus. ASIO, if available, should lower the resource demands on your computer. Just one of many things to do / try. A lot of studios will have a dedicated audio machine. No other applications to make it less stable.

I have gotten clicks from other things like running a thin-ish wire near the LCD of the laptop or CRT/LCD of the desktop. If the recording application has some clock or waveform monitoring, when the image on the screen changes it sends that inference down that cable. But that's mainly for electret type mics on little more than a headphone extension cable. Back in those early days of thinking that I could just clip a $10 mic to the LCD of my laptop and get something amazing for a result.

 

[eugenetkg]

Basically you're saying #1: stop everything that im doing while im recording, #2 download the ASIO ?

 

[lightsandshapes]

Yep, asio is pretty much essential for recording. I have asio4all and im pretty sure everyone else does aswell, just google it and if your having troubles there should be plenty of tutorials on how to install it and then configure whatever program your using to use the asio4all driver

 

[Washburn100]

Personally, I wouldn't use asio4all. I would use the asio driver specific to your interface. Download the proper driver from the Tascam website. Here's a link:
Product: US-122mkII | TASCAM

 

[eugenetkg]

i just downloaded the asio4all and then i saw washburn1000's reply. hmm, i'm a little confused. is the asio driver supposed to be for the software (audacity) or for the sound card?

 

[eugenetkg]

This is what my recordings currently sound like. D:

Super horrible!!!!!View attachment stupid recording.mp3

 

[Atom Bomb]

i just downloaded the asio4all and then i saw washburn1000's reply. hmm, i'm a little confused. is the asio driver supposed to be for the software (audacity) or for the sound card?

Your sound card will have it's own asio driver. Just spend some time digging around on the Tascam site looking for it.

This will do you wonders switching to this.

The significance of this is this...

WDM drivers to my understanding have a various levels of processing it does from when it receives the signal to when your daw receives it.

With asio it cuts out those levels and i believe the signal just goes from sound card to your daw. NO mid level processing. It's speedier.

Get your ASIO driver.

 

[Washburn100]

As mentioned, each soundcard/interface has it's own specific drivers just like say a video card has it's own drivers. So Tascam would have specific asio drivers written for your unit.

The stuff mentioned about WDM drivers is correct. The biggest difference though is that the asio protocol allows only 1 audio device where the windows (WDM) drivers allows multiple sound devices.

With asio you will have to disable any internal soundcard and only use the Tascam as your audio device. For recording this is what you should do anyway. The asio drivers will have much lower latency and allow for better use of your Tascam and DAW
Good Luck

 

[xplicitstudios]

HI i dont know if this has been answered yet, but if not i know how to fix your delay problem in audacity. its NOT your interface and its NOT your pc, its the Audacity program itself, u need to go into Audacity and click " Edit " tab and click on " Preferences " then click on " Recording " on the left side and then you will see a section called " Latency ", use these settings here, set audio to buffer at 100 and latency correction at -170 and this should fix your delay. As for the clicking i would suggest you check your usb connection or try to use a different usb slot if you have one. Like i said if this hasnt been answered i hope this helped

 

[eugenetkg]

hey guys, a friend of mine suggested that the clicking problem was due to my mic jack being an unbalanced ts wire. i'm going to try with the balanced ts wire and see if the problem goes away. Another thing, i realised that my recordings are actually not delayed but instead its faster than the playback. Is that due to the latency as well?

and apparently my tascam us-122MKII has an asio driver in it already and theres no need to download a seperate one..

 

[buzzard bass]

The driver for the interface should be a disc included with the interface. Not sure I buy the reason for the clicking, not to be obvious, but you don't have a click track turned on somewhere do you?

 

[eugenetkg]

nope, i dont have a click track turned on somewhere. somehow i think the clicking happens really obviously when i sing louder.

still having problems with this : "i realised that my recordings are actually not delayed but instead its faster than the playback. Is that due to the latency as well? "