Sound delay while playing or singing.

[Dr Gomez]

I am using a Griffin iMic, in conjunction with audacity, which I want to use to record my acoustic guitar and vocals with. I do get sound and can record to Audacity, but I get a half-a-second delay between playing a note and it actually sounding and recording. This is far too distracting to perform. In fact it’s impossible. I think this problem is called “latency”.

I have searched for hours, but cannot find an answer to this problem, or even what causes it.

Can anyone help me please?

[kozikowski]

Latency is one reason analog audio equipment didn't die out immediately. "What do you mean there's a two second delay...?"

You're never supposed to hear yourself except from the monitor point on the sound mixer. You can configure Audacity to let you listen to track one while you're creating track two. This works out well if you have a nice fast computer with lots of memory and drive space. If you don't, you may end up with time-offset tracks and need to slide them around a bit in post production to line them up for the final show. This is also a really good time to invest in a click track for a lead-in.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, [First Note]

I can't find the wiki pages immediately, but the solution is buried in here...

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... _Home_Page

Everybody want to do this, so there are also millions of postings in the forum with answers.

Windows is something of a problem because of the "versatility" of the sound system. That's Microsoft-Speak for a million different ways to kill yourself and your production.

One of the settings that's critical is Playthrough.

Audacity Preferences > Audio I/O and look at the selections on the bottom of that panel.

Koz

[Dr Gomez]

Thank you for your reply, koz.

kozikowski wrote:
‘Latency is one reason analog audio equipment didn't die out immediately. "What do you mean there's a two second delay...?"’
There is literally a half-a-second delay in sound from the moment I pick the string or sing a note before I hear it via the monitor, (in this case my PC speakers) or it records. The delay in recording would be fine, as I could simply use the slide tool, but the delay in relaying the sound to the speakers makes playing and singing impossible.

kozikowski wrote:
’You're never supposed to hear yourself except from the monitor point on the sound mixer.’
I am using the ‘monitor input’ and this is where the delay is occurring.

The strange thing is that, when using my Guitar Port with Audacity, I don’t get this problem. I can only assume that this is because it acts as a sound card. This is no good for singing or acoustic work though.

kozikowski wrote:
‘You can configure Audacity to let you listen to track one while you're creating track two.’
I have tried ticking both the ‘Play other tracks while recording new one’ and the ‘Software play through [Play new track while recording it]
It will both record and play while the other track runs. It’s just the delay in sound from guitar/mic to the monitor that is causing problems for me.

kozikowski wrote:
This works out well if you have a nice fast computer with lots of memory and drive space. If you don't, you may end up with time-offset tracks and need to slide them around a bit in post production to line them up for the final show.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head here, mate. My system probably does need upgrading:
AMD Sempron 2400+, 1.68GHz, 500mb ram. 80GB disc.

kozikowski wrote:
This is also a really good time to invest in a click track for a lead-in.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, [First Note]
I have that capability, but it doesn’t help in any way if the note doesn’t sound until a ½ second after the beat it was actually played on with other notes already played yet to sound.

kozikowski wrote:
’I can't find the wiki pages immediately, but the solution is buried in here...’
Cheers for that, koz. I will go over it tomorrow and see what I can find. If all else fails I can create music on my Boss recorder and transfer it’s AIFF files to MP3 and edit and mix them in Audacity, which is much easier and more straightforward than on the Boss. That’s why I wanted Audacity in the first place really.

Once again, thanks for your help.;0)

[steve]

Turn off "Software play through".
Software play through is slow and will cause an unacceptable delay for live monitoring.

[Dr Gomez]

Turn off "Software play through".
Software play through is slow and will cause an unacceptable delay for live monitoring.

Cheers, Steve!

I have tried that, but it didn't work. I think it may be that my PC is unable to cope. I'll buy a Ram stick and clear out my Hard Drive to see if that helps. I have noticed that I have to close down and restart Audacity for some changes to take effect. I'll give it another try just in case I didn't do this last time.

Ican't find anything on wiki that helps, but there's something on YouTube that describes the problem I'm having under the name "How to Reduce Latency: GarageBand Tutorial". It had some good suggestions that might work for Audacity. If I get it working properly I'll post it on here and explain how I did it.

[steve]

A half second delay is considerably more than just "latency". Latency is measured in milliseconds, not seconds. There must be something else going on. I know this is not an expensive piece of hardware, but you should not be getting latency anywhere near that amount.

Here's what Griffin have to say on the subject:

There seems to be a delay in the sound coming out of the computer.

Currently most, if not all, USB Audio devices seem to suffer a small amount of "latency," a delay from the time audio is input until the time audio is output from the computer. This delay is measured in milliseconds, and varies slightly depending on the configuration of your Mac. Generally, disabling Virtual Memory and File Sharing will shorten the delay significantly. But even with reduced latency, you may not be able to do real-time monitoring and recording. If you don't require real-time monitoring (recording from VCR, turntable, etc.), latency is of no concern.

Using iMic to record with minimum latency is possible through the use of an external mixer. The mixer doesn't have to be fancy, but it will need at least three, preferably four, outputs. Brand name mixers such as Midiman or Samson can be purchased for less than $125.

Here's how to handle latency:

* Plug the "Main Outs" of the mixer into your receiver or powered speakers.
* Plug your instrument (keyboard, guitar, microphone, etc.) into the mixer (i.e., "Input 1" or, if stereo, "Inputs 1 & 2") and route the signal to the main output of the mixer. You should be able to play and hear your instrument as you do when you're playing live.
* Plug iMic's "Audio Out" into the mixer. You might have to use an adapter on the cable to make this work. It's recommended that you buy a dedicated cable with the right connections, as adapters are prone to all sorts of problems.
* Assign the input(s) that your instrument is on to a "submaster(s)" (i.e., submaster 1 or 1&2). If your mixer doesn't have a submaster, you could use an "auxiliary send" such as the one you would use to send a signal to a reverb or delay unit. Any way that you can get out of your mixer WITHOUT using the "main outs" will work. Whatever output you choose, connect it using the appropriate cable to iMic's input.
* In the Sound control panel, set the input to "iMic USB Audio". Make sure you turn off the Sound Playthrough or Passthrough in your audio recording software. That way you won't hear your input as it comes out of the computer. You don't want to hear the sound from that source because it will be delayed and you'll be out of sync with your pre-recorded material. Instead, because you have assigned your instrument to play directly out of the mixer, you are playing in real time with the pre-recorded material. All tracks will be in sync on playback.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/articles/286

[Dr Gomez]

A half second delay is considerably more than just "latency". Latency is measured in milliseconds, not seconds. There must be something else going on. I know this is not an expensive piece of hardware, but you should not be getting latency anywhere near that amount.

Here's what Griffin have to say on the subject:

<Snip>

Thanks, Steve.

I think this could be the answer. Thanks for finding that. I wasn't sure if it was the iMic causing the problem or not. I'd hoped a bit of system tweaking would've solved the problem, but alas not. At least I now know what I have to do in order to solve the problem.

Thanks again!

[Dr Gomez]

I have sort of solved my problem. I have a little mic pre-amp that I have now plugged into my Griffin iMic. This now enables me to record without any latency. The only problem, as stevethefiddle suggested, is ‘Software Playthrough’ has to be disabled in ‘Audacity Preferences’.

It’s a bit of a downer that I cannot monitor myself properly while recording, but at least a I can play/Sing along while recording in real time.

Why adding the mic pre-amp makes a difference I have no idea.

[steve]

Why adding the mic pre-amp makes a difference I have no idea.

I guess they must be amplifying the signal in software - in which case you should get the same result if you record into Audacity with it set to "line level", and then Amplify or Normalise the very quiet recording up to a reasonable level, though I would expect that the noise level would be rather high. Using a microphone pre-amp before the imic (as you are now doing) is a much better solution.