Audacity Forum

Hey all. I've got a simple setup, but some serious lag issues when recording. I run my guitar amp directly into my interface (Session I/O), which is connected to my PC via USB. I use a decent pair of headphones plugged into my interface to listen. However, when recording, any note I hit takes about a second to play through the headphones and it's driving me crazy. I've checked drivers, and fiddled around with the buffer settings in Audacity and my interface control panel but nothing works.

Chances are your headphones, even though they're plugged into your external audio interface, are listening to the digital sound coming out of the computer -- late as you noticed. That's the instruction book you need to be reading to find out how to get the headphones to monitor the live sound leaving toward the computer, not the sound coming back. I have an interface that does that and it has two volume controls: live sound and computer return.

You might be able to help a little in Audacity Preferences by turning off Software Playthrough. That's the setting that sends Audacity sound out to you -- and it's always late.

You'll need to figure this out before you start overdubbing. That's a nightmare unless you can control your monitor points.

Koz