Slight delay with adobe audition & focusrite pro40

[gamazz50]

I've been recording on my pc with 32gb ram. Using a focusrite pro 40 firewire and audition cs6. Its been working fine but suddenly i'm getting a very slight delay. It seems like it could be a latency problem or my drives slowing down. how can i test this to figure out what i need to do?

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hey,
If it's a consistent delay it's most likely latency as a result of the hardware buffer size settings, or latency that's been introduced by a plugin.

I don't know Audition but most suits have a file/settings, file/preferences, device/settings....something like.
Look for buffer size or latency adjustment options. Ideally you'll want the buffer size to be 256 or less. If it was 512 or higher, that was most likely the problem.

It's not going to be related to the drives. If your software can't get audio from/to the drives quick enough, it'll just crap out and tell you.

Maybe less likely but it's also possible that you've been using hardware monitoring up until now and recently switched without knowing?
If your interface has that option, it'll be a physical knob on the front of it labelled software/direct, or something like that.

Software latency as described above won't be heard when using direct or hardware monitoring but, equally, you won't be able to preview any software effects that you've added, whilst in record mode.
Hope that's useful.

 

[ecc83]

I do have AA 1.5 (short story, long ago) but I rarely use it except to play things that most other software won't!

Just fired it up with the KA6 connected and try as I might, I cannot find ASIO drivers! I don't know which version OP has but without ASIO drivers latency will likely be poor?

Dave.

 

[ecc83]

DOH! Just spotted it, CS6 (only on first jolt of Joe) I looked at trying Adobe's freebie but it loads an installer, not the software so, knowing Adobe and their constant updates of crap I shall pass!

Dave.

 

[Bobbsy]

FYI, Adobe stopped doing upgrades for CS6 over a year ago (and 1.5 sometime prehistoric). The installer would be for the week's trial of the current CC 2017 version.

A couple of thoughts:

First, it COULD be driver related. Assuming you're using ASIO drivers, Audition (and I assume most other DAWs) uses information within the drivers to compensate for the difference in timing between the playback you hear from the computer and the live mic heard directly. This compensation is generally very effective.

Second, if your drive (or maybe the portion of your drive allocated for the buffer) is getting a bit full, that can slow down performance.

Third, it's always worth checking to see if a software update or something has managed to sneak in a new background process which is affecting your Audition performance.

Some contradictory advice: first, see if there are any fresh Focusrite driver up dates and, if so, try them. Failing that, perhaps pick a restore point on you computer from back when all was well.