multi track timing off [SOLVED]

when i record one track, then ‘overdub’ a second, the second track is off by about half a second.
on operating system OS X 10.11.6. any help would be AWESOME!
also, would like to point out that I’m a ‘mac newbie’. been on windows for years… so i do have some experience in recording programs… just not on the Mac.
i first started this journey with my macbook and an irig version 1… can record fine, but timing on second track is off by half a second. so i bought a presonus audiobox usb interface. hoping to fix the lagging track recording. still doing it tho.
thank you for any assistance anyone can give!

That’s Recording Latency. Overdub a second track and the two are off-time when you play them back. That’s the one you can set.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_recording_multi_track_overdubs.html

This is a concept picture.

I’m playing back Generate > Click Track as a “bed” into my earphone and recording it with my live microphone. I measure the timing difference between those two after the recording and that’s the correction value I type into Audacity > Preferences > Recording > Latency Correction.

Then I do it all again until the timing error is gone or enough so it doesn’t make any difference.

Fair warning there is another latency that’s not so much fun. There’s Machine Latency and it’s the reason you can’t listen to yourself while you perform because of the echo. You can’t set that one. That one you have to “correct” by buying the right interfaces and hardware.

I reviewed three different devices that can be used for “Perfect Overdubbing”. A USB microphone amplifier, a plain stereo USB interface and a USB microphone. Each of them has a headphone connection and allows you to hear a perfect mix while you’re overdubbing. The modern advertisement version of that is “Zero Latency Monitoring.” The makers figured out how valuable this was and started to advertise it, so a number of devices can do that now.

Let us know where you get stuck if you do.

Koz

messed with it for a sec and got decent enough with what i need… thank you!