"Software Passthrough Latency" "Analog to USB?"

[Jim Torzynski]

I'm a new user. This is fantastic BUT. When I plug my (SM57) mic into "mic in", and my Headphones (Sony MDR 7506) into "headphones out", I get the full force of the infamous "Software Passthrough Latency" delay, which I think makes the whole program EXTREMELY limited. The little bit of research I've done seems to indicate that this is mostly a hardware issue, so I tried reconfiguring to my Logitech USB Headset, and although there's a little latency, it works a lot better, and I think maybe I could live with it. I'm running Vista on a late model HP Pavilion DV6 (64 bit), so I have a good sound card and a fast processor.

My questions are:
Will a basic analog to digital interface solve this problem?
Can I just get a cheap USB guitar cord, or USB mic cord, or something, and make it work?
Is there some way of getting around M-Audio hardware and Pro Tools?

[ulrichburke]

There's a couple of answers I need based on things you imply in your post, but don't make clear.

For starters, M-Audio. You got an M-Audio Audiohile 2496 soundcard going on there (same as mine!)

Also, you mention Protools. Is that in the loop as WELL as Audacity, by which I mean do you have them both up and running at the same time? From the trial version of Protools I've used, it' eats processor power like Pacman eats spots so that could well be a reason for latency!! If you're just doing a voice recording, I don't see why you need Protools on at that point. If you've got the sounds going into the comp. and back out FROM the comp. to loudspeakers, then you can use Audacity to record on-the-fly. Just click on RECORD before you start singing/playing and it'll record whatever you can hear.

If it's NOT recording what you're hearing, then leave me a note because you have to set up the M-Audio card the right way to do it. If it's the 2496 you got I can tell you straight off. If it's another one, I' can tell you the theory and you'll have to spot the settings on your soundcard's driver interface panel. Basically, why not record the soundtrack first and work on it with the Audacity tools afterwards? All these packages have the same sets of tools anyway, you can only do so many things to a sound, so Protools, Audacity are much of a muchness in that respect (Yeah, I'll probably be jumped on for saying that, but what the heck.)

M-Audio will tell you 'you can't record what you hear from our soundcards, they're not designed like that'. Which is bull and I've got a mile of recordings to prove them wrong.

If I've misunderstood your question, feel free to tell me that too.

Yours respectfully

ulrichburke

[Jim Torzynski]

Thanks to ulrichburke for the time you took answering my stupidly worded question, I see now I wasn't being clear.
The thing is, I don't have an M-Audio soundcard, or any M-Audio hardware, or Pro Tools. It'd be great if I could afford it, but it would be more than I really need, and if I did have Pro Tools, I wouldn't be messing around with Audacity. But do I need to get all that just for the basic functions? Audacity suits me just fine, for now, and I'm trying to figure out the minimum hardware I need to make it work. Real time monitoring is very important to me, my hearing ain't what it used to be, and I can see that setting up, getting a good take and overdubbing will be really tedious or impossible without live monitoring. What I meant is can I do it WITHOUT getting an m-box or switching to Pro Tools?
Since Audacity has the passthrough option, I figure there must be some way to make it work properly, hopefully without too much additional hardware. Several of the posts I read suggested just working without monitor, but I need it. Ive even had to get a small PA just for practice, so I can hear myself and do some basic live mixing. I need to record clean tracks for overdubbing and mixing. I've seen it before, a friend of mine had some cheap software, on an older machine and sound card, and he never overcame the latency problem, it was impossible to overdub, no matter what we tried. And yes, you can synch up the tracks some, but it doesn't matter if you can't play along with existing tracks in the first place. Whats the use in multitrack software if you can't overdub one track at a time?
I guess I'll have to do some more research in the hardware section. What I was trying to ask in my post is do I need a better soundcard, and/or an m-box? Can anybody suggest hardware? Will one of those USB guitar cords with the built-in sound card work? Will something like that work for a dynamic mic, or will I need a condenser mic? Can anybody point me to posts on this forum that would help?

[ulrichburke]

Dear Jim.

I'm not expert enough to suggest a magic-wand answer here - if I was, I wouldn't be posting my own problems on this forum! BUT - here's a 2 cents' worth from personal experience

Latency usually means 'not-the-world's-fastest-system'. Now one of the great things about Audacity is it records all you can hear. If you've got a - say - guitar going into your computer and you can hear it, when you press RECORD on Audacity, it can hear it, too. For the following trick, you'll need an external MP3 player - mobile phone, Ipod, cheap 10-buck stick you can shove earphones in, anything.

Record the lead instrument. Save it as a .WAV (Wavefile) AND bounce it down as an MP3. Shove it on the external player and set up the first accompanying instrument on the computer. Now LISTEN to the guitar on the MP3 player and play along to it with the backing instrument you've just plugged into the computer. That way, you're still only recording one instrument at a time on the computer so you're utilising as little processing power as possible and there shouldn't be any latency issues.

When you've done the first accompanying instrument, load BOTH instruments' wave files into Audacity, make sure they're synched and bounce the pair down as a new MP3. You don't have to save the pair as a composite wave file because you're not mixing or anything yet, just keep them as 2 separate wave files. Open a new, empty Audacity file.

Put the new MP3 of BOTH instruments TOGETHER - the one you've just created - onto the MP3 player, connect the 3rd instrument to the computer and repeat the above steps....

Do you see what's happening? You're building up a ROUGH MP3 of all the sounds dubbed on top of eachother. You're also creating a little library of all the sounds, lead and accompanying, as separate wave-files on the hard drive. Because you're only recording single sounds on the computer, there shouldn't be any latency problem . When you've finished recording all the sounds, you can THEN import them all into Audacity at once - drag'n'drop the .WAV files in from the folder you've stored them in - and start mixing. Again, because Audacity's not having to send out any MIDI signals anywhere and wait for them to return, there shouldn't be any latency problem. Or if there is, it'll be identical on ALL the files, so they'll ALL start TOGETHER after the pause, so it won't really count!

I know there still COULD be a latency issue between you playing a chord on the second/subsequent instrument and Audacity 'hearing' it to record it. But - HOPEFULLY!! - as the delay will be identical with ALL the instruments you're using, the delays will cancel eachother out.

There IS a plan B as well, but tell me if the above idea works as a workaround, long-winded though it might sound. And if anyone comes up with a better stop-gap iidea, tell me and I'll learn something, too. If not, I'[ll tell you Plan B! If there's anything I haven't explained well enough here, tell me that, too, and I'll re-do the explanation.

There is a PERFECTLY LEGIT free version of Pro Tools floating around out there. No I'm not talking Jack Sparrow, it really IS legit!

Yours respectfully

ulrichburke

[kozikowski]

There is a plan C. Audacity 1.3 allows latency tuning. It unhooks the playback timing from the record timing -- essentially playing back the drum track early so you can hear it and record the total performance in the correct time.

Koz

[ulrichburke]

Dear Koz.

I didn't know you could do that with Audacity! How do you that, as in, like, what do you click on where to make that happen?

Yours puzzledly (I know this isn't my thread, I'm NOT trying to hijack it!)

ulrichburke

[waxcylinder]

See this page from the manual that is under development for the upcoming v2.0 release - applies to 1.3.x too: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... tency_Test

WC

[steve]

Software Playthrough will always produce horrible latency - it's only really there for people recording from USB turntables and similar devices where there is no hardware route from the input device to the output device. Most sound cards will provide hardware playthrough, providing they are set up correctly, which gives very much lower latency (and can be easily corrected as described in waxcylinder's link).

[Jim Torzynski]

Thanks to everybody for your advice, I'm gonna get off line and set up my system and try everything. I'll post results ASAP!