YellowDwarf
Dismember
This is a long story so please bear with me. I'm a home enthusiast, by no means a pro and have been doing this for 10 years.
I used to use an audiophile 2496 into a Mackie 1202 into Sonar X1 with minimal (I forget the exact number) latency. I could record only one track at a time, but that fit my setup and abilities. That is to say, I could record and monitor a new guitar track with 10-30 plugins going on in the song with no latency problem. Same goes for MIDI.
Then I put together a new DAW with an ASUS Z97 board, i5-4690 3.5 GHz, 16 gigs, separate drives for the OS (now Win 10) and found I couldn't use the darned 2496 anymore because there are no PCI slots ... So I cheaply bought a second hand Tascam US 122 mkII and haven't been happy since. Yes, I have the latest drivers and have updated the firmware.
I can't record MIDI or a mic'd guitar and monitor at the same time anymore without an annoying latency that really makes it hard for me to keep musical time. On top of this, I cannot adjust the number of buffers or the buffer size. Sonar isn't happy unless I leave it at "normal" audio performance settings - when I set it to fastest Sonar goes haywire, so I can't seem to fix it that way.
So, this is a long way of asking the following (yeah, it's a "what's the best" question):
If I have to stick with an interface, I'd like to spend some money and get something decent that doesn't have this monitoring latency. I may record 2-4 tracks simultaneously, so it would need up to 4 inputs and of course MIDI capabilities. But my prime desire is to not have to deal with this frigging latency, I want to hear the effects as I play (like I used to be able to do with the 2496). Ideas from guys in a similar boat would be greatly appreciated, especially something known to work well with Sonar X3.
If you guys think there's a cost effective way to do this without an interface, I'd be glad to hear it.
I have $6-800 Canadian saved up. Hopefully I've made myself clear and I appreciate your input.
Thanks,
Dwarf
I used to use an audiophile 2496 into a Mackie 1202 into Sonar X1 with minimal (I forget the exact number) latency. I could record only one track at a time, but that fit my setup and abilities. That is to say, I could record and monitor a new guitar track with 10-30 plugins going on in the song with no latency problem. Same goes for MIDI.
Then I put together a new DAW with an ASUS Z97 board, i5-4690 3.5 GHz, 16 gigs, separate drives for the OS (now Win 10) and found I couldn't use the darned 2496 anymore because there are no PCI slots ... So I cheaply bought a second hand Tascam US 122 mkII and haven't been happy since. Yes, I have the latest drivers and have updated the firmware.
I can't record MIDI or a mic'd guitar and monitor at the same time anymore without an annoying latency that really makes it hard for me to keep musical time. On top of this, I cannot adjust the number of buffers or the buffer size. Sonar isn't happy unless I leave it at "normal" audio performance settings - when I set it to fastest Sonar goes haywire, so I can't seem to fix it that way.
So, this is a long way of asking the following (yeah, it's a "what's the best" question):
If I have to stick with an interface, I'd like to spend some money and get something decent that doesn't have this monitoring latency. I may record 2-4 tracks simultaneously, so it would need up to 4 inputs and of course MIDI capabilities. But my prime desire is to not have to deal with this frigging latency, I want to hear the effects as I play (like I used to be able to do with the 2496). Ideas from guys in a similar boat would be greatly appreciated, especially something known to work well with Sonar X3.
If you guys think there's a cost effective way to do this without an interface, I'd be glad to hear it.
I have $6-800 Canadian saved up. Hopefully I've made myself clear and I appreciate your input.
Thanks,
Dwarf