Intel atom 330 and recording vocals

[dumbo2860]

Hey all

Im planning to buy a Asus eeetop with following specs:

intel atom 330 dual-core 1.6ghz
2gb ddr2 ram
Nvidia ion

Is it possible with these specs to record vocals over a mp3 beat with a microphone plugged in to a external soundcard (emu 0404) without any worries of the sound?

Thank you

[kozikowski]

You can't do that with many computers. Audacity doesn't directly support ASIO software without recompiling and without that, you may always have sound delays that will prevent you singing to yourself -- overdubbing.

Audacity 1.3.12 has a setting that will allow you to 'Tune Out' disk drive latency, but that's not the only delay in the system. Many machines will not let you listen to yourself in your headphones -- the mix. The delay will drive you nuts. You can only listen to the music bed playback.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Some external sound cards and microphones let you listen to the show and mix before the computer gets to it. Those do work.

Don't even dream of using Audacity 1.2 for this.

Koz

[dumbo2860]

hmm is it because of the soundcard then?

if i just plugged my microphone right in to the computer with an usb-to-xlr adapter it would work fine?

[billw58]

hmm is it because of the soundcard then?
if i just plugged my microphone right in to the computer with an usb-to-xlr adapter it would work fine?

No, that won't work. When you do that you hear yourself (played back through the computer speakers or headphone jack) with a substantial delay. As Koz points out, only by compiling Audacity yourself with ASIO support (and using an ASIO compliant sound card and driver) do you have any hope of doing this.

Overdubbing generally requires an external mixer.

-- Bill

[steve]

Is it possible with these specs to record vocals over a mp3 beat with a microphone plugged in to a external soundcard (emu 0404) without any worries of the sound?

Why is everyone going on about ASIO?
Virtually all sound cards are supplied with standard Windows drivers which will work with Audacity.
If the beats are imported into Audacity then correctly setting up latency correction should allow other tracks (vocals) to be recorded and automatically synchronised with the beat track (without ever using ASIO drivers).

I've no experience of atom processors or the emu 0404, but in the past I've successfully made multi-track recordings using an ancient Intel Pentium II 500 MHz with an equally ancient SoundBlaster Live sound card (using Audacity 1.3.4 on Windows XP).

I'd certainly agree not to bother with Audacity 1.2 for multi-track projects - go straight for Audacity 1.3.12

[billw58]

@Steve: it's the delay between singing and hearing yourself using the built-in sound card that's the issue. How did you get around that?

-- Bill

[steve]

it's the delay between singing and hearing yourself using the built-in sound card that's the issue. How did you get around that?

With the SB Live card it's just a matter of enabling playback of the Mic input (can be set in the Windows Mixer on XP). This provides hardware playthrough that has very low latency. Whether this works or not depends on the drivers, but under XP it was available for most PCI sound cards. Windows 7 users may not be so lucky, but it depends on the drivers rather than the operating system.

For Linux users, the Jack audio system allows low latency monitoring by connecting the system input to the system output in the Jack Patchbay.

Some of the more expensive USB microphones have a headphone socket that allow direct (zero latency) monitoring of the microphone input which can be mixed with the playback audio so that the user can hear both the microphone and the previously recorded track at the same time.

If the user has a mixing desk, then the microphone(s) may be monitored directly from the desk, though care must be taken that the playback from the computer does not get added to the source (microphone) that is being sent back to the computer.

Warning: if playback of the microphone is enabled, headphones must be used as loudspeakers will cause feedback.

If all else fails it's worth remembering that a singer can hear their own voice even while wearing headphones with no "fold-back". Some singers actually prefer to sing with just one side of their headphones on so that they can hear their voice acoustically with the other ear.

Summing up - there are some combinations that do not work - recording with a USB microphone and monitoring from an internal sound card will always have a delay (though using a low latency sound system such as ASIO or Jack may keep the latency loww enough to not be a problem). Recording a sound card with drivers that do not allow hardware playthrough will be a problem (does this include all Mac computers?)
But there are plenty of combinations/configurations that do work (as outlined above). ASIO is just one way of achieving low latency monitoring, but for serious work it's best to use hardware that allows zero latency monitoring (direct hard-wired monitoring).