Audio Echo and No Midi with Sonar and Tascam US-122

[daveb74]

Newbie here.

I'm using Sonar 3 with a Tascam US-122 hooked up through USB on Windows XP. I'm slowly figuring things out, but I've got three big questions, all of which involving monitoring.

1. I've been playing around with effects on my guitar and have the Input Echo on. I'm monitoring it through the US-122, and the latency is considerable. I've messed around with the buffer size, but nothing seems to effect it much. Even though the signal is coming in and out through the USB, could the sound card be impacting this? Any ideas?

2. I've switched my output to listen to what I've recorded, and it sounds terrible coming through my sound card (SoundBlasterLive!, which I know can be trouble) to my speakers (which are just the speakers that came with my PC).

3. I've played with the drum mapping (my only real experience with MIDI, at the moment), and I can't hear it through the TASCAM, but I can hear it clear as a bell through my soundcard and speakers when I switch the output for those tracks. So, basically, my recorded guitar tracks sound fine only through the TASCAM, and my MIDI tracks sound fine only through the sound card.

 

[dachay2tnr]

1. I've been playing around with effects on my guitar and have the Input Echo on. I'm monitoring it through the US-122, and the latency is considerable. I've messed around with the buffer size, but nothing seems to effect it much. Even though the signal is coming in and out through the USB, could the sound card be impacting this? Any ideas?

If you look in Options -> Audio you can see what your latency is. Anything over 5 ms will generallly be heard as an echo. Anything over 10 ms will probably be an annoying echo. And yes, this could very well be from your sound card and/or it's drivers. It could also be from a slow computer system. Or some combination. Generally USB, particularly USB 1, is not considered fast enough for audio work.

2. I've switched my output to listen to what I've recorded, and it sounds terrible coming through my sound card (SoundBlasterLive!, which I know can be trouble) to my speakers (which are just the speakers that came with my PC).

And your question is???

3. I've played with the drum mapping (my only real experience with MIDI, at the moment), and I can't hear it through the TASCAM, but I can hear it clear as a bell through my soundcard and speakers when I switch the output for those tracks. So, basically, my recorded guitar tracks sound fine only through the TASCAM, and my MIDI tracks sound fine only through the sound card.

This is most likely because there is no MIDI synth in the Tascam. It works with the SB Live because you are using it's MIDI synth capability to generate the sounds.

Switch to using a DXi (Edirol VSC for example) for your MIDI synth and it will play back through the Tascam.

 

[daveb74]

If you look in Options -> Audio you can see what your latency is. Anything over 5 ms will generallly be heard as an echo. Anything over 10 ms will probably be an annoying echo. And yes, this could very well be from your sound card and/or it's drivers. It could also be from a slow computer system. Or some combination. Generally USB, particularly USB 1, is not considered fast enough for audio work.

Thanks! That helped me solve that problem. Sort of. By reducing the latency on the TASCAM driver AND Sonar to the minimum, I was able to bring it down to 5.8. Not great, but, as you said, not annoying.

And your question is???

Whoops. My question is "Is there a way to listen to my recorded tracks through my internal soundcard, using regular speakers? Or am I going to have to do all my monitoring and playback through the Tascam until I want to convert it to an MP3 or something?

This is most likely because there is no MIDI synth in the Tascam. It works with the SB Live because you are using it's MIDI synth capability to generate the sounds.

Switch to using a DXi (Edirol VSC for example) for your MIDI synth and it will play back through the Tascam.

That did the trick! Thanks.