Latency in the monitor

Using Audacity 3.0.2 on Big Sur 11.5.1.

I get a delay in sound when I turn my monitor on. Nothing I try in ‘PREFERENCES’ effects it. I tried Preferences>Devices>Latency> Latency Compensation & the Buffering tool also.

My recording chain is an older model Rode NT1>Apogee ONE (USB input). It works fine in other DAWs.

How can I get direct monitoring?

Thank you!

For zero latency monitoring you have to plug your headphones into the interface or the microphone, and they have to support local monitoring.

Ideally, the interface or microphone also supports computer playback and local monitoring and if your moons and stars lined up, the ability to fade between them.

Plugging headphones into the computer is always going to be “one computer late.” Audacity accepts the incoming sound, processes it, and sends it back out. That’s the whole story.

Audacity doesn’t have shortcut processes such as some programs do and the ASIO service. Audacity doesn’t directly support ASIO, even ASIO For All. You can, if you’re up to it, compile a new Audacity program from the source codes to accept and use ASIO. That does work.

How many computer programs have you compiled?

I see the Apogee-1 has a wiring harness that seems to support a place to plug headphones. That’s how to do this. Set the Apogee-1 for both playback and record. Turn off Playthrough in Audacity Preferences.

Koz

If the goal is music overdubbing, there is a tutorial about how to do that.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_recording_multi_track_overdubs.html

Fair warning it’s not that easy. Overdubbing requires that the computer record and play absolutely perfectly at the same time. You have to use an internal drive. No network drives or clouds.

It’s a Universal Speed and Health Test. Overdubbing is the most stressful thing a computer sound system can do.

Koz