Audacity Forum

PLEASE HELP. I HAVE PLUGGED MY GEMINI MIXER INTO MY PC THRU THE "LINE IN" PLUG. THEN ON AUDACITY, WHEN I CLICK RECORD I CAN HERE THE MUSIC I AM PLAYING, BUT WITH A DELAY. E.G. IF I PRESS DOWN THE CD DECK TO STOP THE TUNE, THERE IS A 2 SECOND DELAY IN DOING IT THRU AUDACITY...............HOW TO I GET IT TO PLAY IN REAL TIME??? ITS PROVING IMPOSSIBLE TO MIX WITH THE DELAY.

THANKS GUYS.

Hi,

I'm not specialist on Audacity and experimented on this software but I suppose that you're are listening the recorder output trough the software process (option in Preference Menu) and the delay is probably due to this process.

I suggest you monitor only the result of your audio mix at the output of your audio board and not the recorded one (if possible of course !)

Good luck

What he said, plus there is a "Hardware Playthrough" option as well as the "Software Playthrough" option in Audacity Preferences. Sometimes switching those can help. All your production audio management has to be done through the mixer or external processing. Trying to do it live through the computer will make you crazy because the computer will always have processor latency delay. It's the digital audio killer.

Koz

Most mixers have the facility to monitor directly from them - this is great - Zero latency direct monitoring. The only thing you need to watch is the recording levels in Audacity. Grab the meter toolbar with your mouse an d move it - you can stretch it to full screen width which makes monitoring much easier and more accurate. On Audacity 1.3.5 there are some additional metering options (right click on the meter) that make the meters even better.

I'm new to this Audacity thing and I've used the program twice. On a Windows XP comptuer, just doing 4-5 tracks, we had no problem just having the other tracks play while we recorded, and simply followed the previously recorded tracks. I now put Audacity on my Vista PC and I found this split-second delay in the playback, and it's been driving me nuts. This is the closest thread I can find that may be of use...and I'm not entirely sure how to use the mixer to monitor...

If we are adding background vocals to a pre-recorded song, the easiest thing is to play the song in Audacity and record it real-time in time with the music...but with this delay that's not possible...so how would you get a no-delay mix?

I'm using a keyboard and mic plugged into a small 10-channel mixer that is then plugged into the line-in on the Sound Card.

In Audacity, go into "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O" and make sure that "software playthrough" is switched off (not selected).