Time Shift Glitch

[CaleyM]

Every time I record the whole track gets shifted to the left (off the graph). I've tried the align options and can't get it to sound right. It's so frustrating that I'm just switching to a different program.

[steve]

Please see this article in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/latency_test.html

[kozikowski]

Just reading over that. There's a fine shade of difference leading to maybe three Latencies.

Machine Latency is the amount of time the machine takes to return your own live voice to you. That's pretty much fixed and cannot be changed with simple adjustments. Change the software, yes, change the drivers, yes, change the hardware, yes, but fixing that is not adjusting a slider.

Recording Latency, according to the wiki is the delay the machine exhibits in putting your live show on the disk.

But that's not the whole story because the recording is only made after you sing, and you sing in response to the old track playback -- which comes from the same drive -- late. So there is also Performance Latency. Someone will correct me.

Koz

[CaleyM]

I see the correction value now. Should there be latency recording directly from the MIDI Synth channel?

[steve]

Should there be latency recording directly from the MIDI Synth channel?

You will need to explain what you mean. Audacity does not record MIDI.

[CaleyM]

MIDI Synth is a real-time audio stream from the soundfont bank manager in Audigy 4 software. It's one of the selectable recording channels on my system. As a programmer that doesn't know OpenAL yet, I would guess that it could be made to line up correctly.

[steve]

OK I see what you mean now. Unfortunately I can't give a definitive answer. I'd expect there to be some latency, but whether or not, and if so how much, will depend on the implementation within the hardware and it's drivers. I don't have an Audigy 4 to test so you'll need to test it yourself.