When I am recording on my USB CAD mic and listening with headphones, there is a substantial delay which you may know, is extremely distracting when trying to record. Roughly 0.5-1 second delays. I’ve tried changing settings in audacity to no avail. I have been reading that because it is a USB mic, and the headphones are also plugged into the computer, the delay comes from the time it takes to go into the mic, into the computer, then back out through the headphones. It said that I need to purchase another device which I could plug the mic and headphones into, then plug into my USB. Can anyone give me any advice? It would be greatly appreciated as this problem is a big pain in the butt. Thanks in advance! 
Yes. That’s the other latency. Recording Latency you can tune out by clever management of the drive recording and playback timing, but System Latency you’re stuck with. You are listening to your live voice one computer late.
I know of no hardware solution that can deal with an already existing USB microphone. The USB microphone that we tested had a hardware port already installed.
http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/samsonGTrackConnections.jpg
The other two were analog solutions. One for an analog microphone and the other for an analog mixer.
Past not hearing yourself and playing blind (and deaf), the two remaining solutions are: not using Audacity and not using this particular Audacity. Being open source, the basic computer code for the program is provided as well as instructions for recompiling it with ASIO support. ASIO provides a shortcut through the computer hardware and while it doesn’t make the problem vanish, it appears to vanish, which is usually just as good.
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_source
Koz
Wow. I’m not a computer literate person at all and understood virtually none of that. lol. But thanks for your response. I’m wondering if I should just get a mic with a headphone jack built in. I feel that would be the easiest and most convenient for those who are computer illiterate.
But thank you! Do you have any suggestions for a headphone mic? I was looking at the Audio Technica ATR 2500. Any advice?