HI all. I am a newby on the forum and this is my first post. I have only performed light recording tasks in Audacity and liked the way it worked. Then my Gateway computer with Vista crashed and I am trying to set up Audacity on a little newer Gateway which runs Windows 7. This computer has an I 3 processor and 6 gigs of ram. I tried to record through the mic / line input on the soundcard and I had a heavy latency problem. My recording process is very basic and I only record for myself to try and learn and improve. The setup is a pedal steel guitar thru a tube preamp. I then come out of the tube preamp to a small Samson mixing pad. I run a backing track from another computer into two more inputs on the mixing pad. I then take the mixing pad output and go into my PC soundcard mic / line input. This worked great on my old computer but not on this one. I decided today to upgrade the Gateway motherboard soundcard to a sound blaster card. I had this done at the local Best buy so it should be installed correctly.
I now have more problems than ever. I cannot get Audacity to record smoothly at all. it constantly skips or has breaks in the recording. I have tried all of the different options in the audacity drop boxes like MME and all of that and of course, several do nothing but the ones that will record just skip like this.
I think I need to find a book titled audacity and settings for dummies or something ! I am not real advanced at recording and the correct settings.
Maybe someone else can help you with the settings… I’m not an expert on this but there are some things you can do to minimize latency by reducing the size of your buffers and tweaking your system (minimizing background tasks) so that you don’t get glitches with small buffers.
Also if you are recording at “high resolution” such as 96kHz/24-bit, try 48kHz/16-bit.
And/or you can try using ASIO4ALL and software that supports ASIO, and optionally more professional hardware that supports true ASIO.
But, I think the BEST solution is re-configure your setup so that you are not monitoring yourself through the computer. Then if you mix with software in post production, you can use a big buffer without worrying about latency and you can synchronize with your backing track when you mix.
You can buy USB audio interfaces that have zero-latency hardware-monitoring built-in ([u]example[/u]). But, it sounds like you’ve got mixers & plenty of equipment to accomplish that already.
You named one item that proved to be right on. I played around with the settings a bit more. I started by downloading the new 2.0 version which I believe is numbered 2.0.5. That changed a few of my drop down options . ( in and out routing ). I now have it set at Windows direct sound, ( speakers - soundblaster Z ), ( mic - soundblaster z ) and 2 stereo
I still had the skip or cutting out but then I went into preferences and unchecked the play through box. I went back and recorded just a few bars and I viewed that it was picking up the steel preamp signal. I played it back and it seemed to have recorded alright. I had no monitors or sound when I was playing the few bars so I really don’t know about the latency issue. I guess that I probably need to run one feed off of the mixing pad into the PC line input and another feed to a separate set of headphones or powered speakers. ? I think that this is what you are suggesting.?
I probably wont get anymore time to try it out this evening but I will set the system up with a monitoring source tomorrow and just have the computer record without the play through. I probably also need to pick up a little newer mixing pad with more output options. I had tried using head phones with my current pad and I could not get enough volume. Its a pretty old Samson pad 9 unit. I need to do some research or have some suggestions made as to what may work well for what I am doing.
I really don’t the first thing about buffer and buffer settings but I am now in the learning process. Who said that you cant teach an old dog some new tricks.
Thanks for the help and I will keep working with it. The sound blaster card is definitely superior sound wise versus the original card. I guess I will find out if it helps the latency issue. Will the latency issue even exist with using monitors verses the play through option?
