Audacity Forum

I'm a new user of Audacity and am trying to record direct guitar on multitracks but don't know how to get around the delay between recording and feedback. Are there any plug-ins or anything to correct for this delay, to record and playback in real time?

Cheers

MsHendrix-WanaB wrote:I'm a new user of Audacity and am trying to record direct guitar on multitracks but don't know how to get around the delay between recording and feedback. Are there any plug-ins or anything to correct for this delay, to record and playback in real time?

Are you talking about the delay between the time you hit a note and the time you hear it played back through the computer? If so, then you are probably using "software playthrough". Go to Edit > Preferences then the Recording tab and uncheck "Software playthrough". If there is a "hardware playthrough" option available there, check it. Now go to your computer's sound control panel and see if you can get the guitar sound to play back through the computer without a delay.

If you are talking about getting the new track in sync with the previous track (overdubbing), then you need to set the "Latency Correction" in that same tab of Preferences. See this page in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... tency_Test

The software playthrough delay and the latency correction are two entirely different things. Latency correction will not help with the playthrough delay - all it does is make a correction after recording a track to move that new track to be in sync with the previous track. The software playthrough delay is fixed and cannot be corrected. The only way to avoid it is to use hardware playthrough. If hardware playthrough does not work or is not available on your system you'll need an external mixer or other external device that includes a headphone output so you can hear your guitar without a delay.

-- Bill

Any idea why it's possible to select both hardware and software playthrough?

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Any idea why it's possible to select both hardware and software playthrough?

Good question. Perhaps a windows user could tell us if the "hardware playthrough" option is even visible in the prefs dialog in windows?

-- Bill

billw58 wrote:Perhaps a windows user could tell us if the "hardware playthrough" option is even visible in the prefs dialog in windows?

In Windows, there is no option for "hardware playthrough". Hardware playthrough is automatic if supported by the hardware - software playthrough is an available option when using hardware that does not support hardware playthrough (such as when using a USB turntable).

stevethefiddle wrote:In Windows, there is no option for "hardware playthrough". Hardware playthrough is automatic if supported by the hardware - software playthrough is an available option when using hardware that does not support hardware playthrough (such as when using a USB turntable).

'Tis as I thought. Strange that the hardware playthrough option is in the Mac prefs, since AFAIK hardware playthrough has not been available on Macs since OSX 10.0.

-- Bill

billw58 wrote:'Tis as I thought. Strange that the hardware playthrough option is in the Mac prefs, since AFAIK hardware playthrough has not been available on Macs since OSX 10.0.

Probably worth bringing up on the audacity-devel list, or at least the Audacity feedback address. I suspect that it is something left over in the code from the olden days.