Audacity Forum

Hey, I'm just wondering... there's a delay during play through, meaning, when the mic is used it takes about half a second to come through the headset. I just wondered if there's any way this could be turned off? I'm aware that you can turn up the mic volume through the windows volume mixer, but this really doesn't play it back loud enough.

So yeah, just to clarify, I'd like to know whether there's any way to get rid of the delay between the mic picking up sound to the speakers playing it back to me via audacity's playthrough option.

I'm attempting to record myself playing music.. so every tiny bit of delay needs to be gotten rid of

Thanks in advance

Audacity 1.3 has tools to tune that out. Audacity 1.2 doesn't, but it does have software playthrough or hardware playthrough in the Preferences menu. Pick one or the other and see if that helps.

This is worst on shower machines. You are listening to one computer's worth of delay.

Koz

Just installed the 1.39beta, and after a quick play around with it, I haven't found anything to correct the delay. I'm beginning to think it's playing back as fast as it can and somehting else is the problem

Audacity Preferences > Recording > Latency didn't help?

I suppose we need to split the difference between your own voice coming back to your headphones late and the composite performance being record out of sync.

If you didn't hear any difference between Software Playthrough and Hardware Playthrough, it may be because your sound card doesn't support the hardware feature. Not all do. Did you restart Audacity between the setting changes? If it doesn't, then you need a new sound card. You and the return pathway will never match up.

Koz

"Software Playthrough" will always cause a substantial delay - usually about half a second or more.
Windows will almost always support hardware playthrough when using an internal sound card, or on-board sound, and for this "software playthrough" should be OFF (not selected).

Hardware playthrough is achieved by enabling playback in the Windows Mixer - it is not a setting in Audacity - it is in your computer sound set-up.
Hardware playthrough is often not available for USB audio devices.

Hey, thanks for the help. As I said, I'm aware that you can turn up the mic volume through the windows volume mixer, but this really doesn't play it back loud enough. I have a realtek sound card in a computer which is just lying around.. I'll probably try and see what I can do with that.

Whiteblooded wrote:I'm aware that you can turn up the mic volume through the windows volume mixer, but this really doesn't play it back loud enough.

Get more sensitive headphones or a headphone amplifier.