Cannot hear plug-ins applied in real-time

[Patrick01]

Hello, my problem is, when I play on my guitar I want to hear the guitar sound with extra effects (plug-ins), I do hear my guitar in real time as I record, but I don’t hear the effects I added. I can only hear the guitar sound with effects once I finish recording and listen to the recorded audio. How do I solve this issue, so I can hear guitar sound with effects while recording? Thank you.

[jademan]

@Patrick01

so I can hear guitar sound with effects while recording?

You cannot do that with Audacity. The “real-time” effects only work on existing tracks.

[Giovani]

Also, sometimes are viewed old version VSTs in VST3 real time effect dialogue. I had a similar strange problem. Due to this please check, if those effects are viewed in this way and also, delete old config files. Other config files will be created instead.

[DVDdoug]

A DAW (Digital Audio Workstation application) can do that.

But there is ALWAYS SOME latency (delay) when monitoring through the computer and most plug-ins add more latency. (1) Sometimes the latency can be reduced to the point where it’s not noticeable and a DAW with ASIO drivers (2) can help.

But sometimes it’s not so easy to get the latency down… And although ASIO was designed for low-latency, it’s usually “something else” that’s interrupting your system and forcing you to use bigger buffers, and a bigger buffer means more delay.

It’s usually best just to monitor by listening directly to a guitar amp, even if the effects aren’t exactly the same.

(1) DAWs have plug-in delay compensation (PDC) but that adjusts for latency after recording to sync with your backing-track. It doesn’t reduce the real-time latency.

(2) The software AND hardware both have to support ASIO. Audacity doesn’t support ASIO unless you compile it yourself, and that still doesn’t get you real-time monitoring of effects.

There is something called ADIO4ALL that “fakes-out” Windows hardware/drivers to work with ASIO software but it doesn’t help if your application doesn’t support ASIO. And since it’s not true ASIO, you might not get the same low-latency benefits.