Listening what I record with delay

[Gale Andrews]

I'd like my other questions to be answered.

Please note, this is an Audacity Forum. Your problem is well known if you had researched it, but is not a fault with Audacity.

We are all volunteers giving our time for nothing. We don't all have expertise in the same areas or the same platforms.

I have the Lenovo Y510p, and I don't know what sound card I have. I'm trying to find it, but everywhere in the computer information it just says "Realtek HD". I'm trying to find what model I have, but can't/don't know how to do it.

It's a sound device built into the motherboard.

I don't think the "model number" of the Realtek device matters. You can get full information on the device including driver version number and installed files by opening Windows Device Manger, expand "Sound, video and game controllers", then right-click over the device and choose "Properties".

View this page for the latest audio drivers for the Realtek device:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_GB/downloa ... D=DS035829 .

The latest driver version number is different according to the version of Windows. As you have Windows 8.1 64-bit, the latest driver is "Version 6.0.1.7030". If that version number is later than the version shown in Device Manager, download and install "6.0.1.7030" from the page above.

Note that it is unlikely this will give you hardware playthrough but it is important that you always have the latest drivers.

Hardware playthrough seems to be really basic. I see it really weird that this new laptop doesn't have that feature.

This is not an Audacity problem so please don't whine about it here. You can give your feedback to Lenovo.

If you whine loud enough they may fund a USB sound card for you.

Is this feature depends on the sound card?
What if I change the sound card to a new one that is better and is able to do this?

You have already been told what to do. Get a USB guitar or USB guitar interface, or a generic USB interface.

As I said, it is unlikely anything except a high end desktop would have hardware playthrough these days.

If I've understand what you said: If I unmark the "listen to this device" option, I should be able to listen to my guitar, automatically using hardware playthrough.

No. If you uncheck "Listen to this device" for the external mic and/or mute the external mic in the Realtek control panel, you won't be able to hear the mic at all (assuming the device is working correctly).

This implicates that in my old laptop, I don't have the option to software playthrough, that I think I don't have.

As already stated, XP does not have "Listen" software playthrough.

Is a USB 10€ sound card better than my sound card? I don't wanna pay for something that records worse than my laptop

Please try the device links you have been given.

You may have a hard time finding a USB sound device that records worse than motherboard audio. Those chips typically cost a few dollars each. Playback is another question - playback can be quite good in motherboard chips, but it varies from device to device and it's hard to know in advance.

what is ASIO?

Please click and read the links you have been given: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/ASIO_Audio_Interface .

I've read that you can have better latency using it.

Yes, but as I said, you will not achieve optimal latency unless you actually have an ASIO sound device. The Realtek and all or most motherboard sound devices are not ASIO enabled devices. ASIO4ALL cannot give latencies as low as ASIO because it is meant for non-ASIO devices.

If you buy the devices suggested then they are ASIO enabled and you could use that functionality if you compiled Audacity with ASIO support and installed the manufacturer's ASIO drivers. But you shouldn't even need ASIO because you can hardware monitor using the headphones jack in the device.

But you said you have to reprogramming Audacity... What that means?

You have to build Audacity from the source code instructions. See: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Developing_On_Windows .

Again, there is no guarantee if you continue to use the Realtek device that ASIO-enabled Audacity would have low enough latency, because Realtek is not an ASIO audio device and you would have to use the generic ASIO4ALL or similar generic ASIO drivers.

But try it. You don't need to recompile Audacity to see if ASIO4ALL reduces the "Listen" latency to an acceptable degree when you are just playing along without recording.


Gale

[kozikowski]

Lenovo has JBL speakers, Dolby Home Theater v4, REALTEK HD everywhere xD

All playback enhancements. Nowhere does it mention recording. This too, is pretty common. I saw an advertising listing that went the whole page with how their product was going to make your life worth living. All playback.

This was the recording description in its entirety:

Mic in.

Musicians are a minority. Of the 700 people in our Los Angeles corporation, I think all of eight of them play an instrument actively enough to require recording. Manufacturers are not beating down the door to service that crowd. Everybody wants to watch to a movie with Dolby, Super-Enhanced DTS Mega-Surround, Super Bass, etc. etc, etc. So those enhancements get pushed to the top of the list.

We recently had a posting from someone with "7.1 Surround" headphones. Good trick, but that was a playback feature. Not recording.

I know this is overkill, but this would work. That's a $100 mixer plugged into a $30 USB adapter. The mixer will handle several guitars and microphones at once and the USB adapter will give you no-delay recording and sound-on-sound mixing.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/pix/ ... Lenovo.jpg

Oddly, I can't even recommend the USB version of the same mixer, because I can't get them to tell me how their monitoring works. This is way harder than you think it should be.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

Regard the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlett2i2

It suggests, but never comes right out and says that it will mix live (no latency) monitoring with computer USB playback.

Right, but we know Behringer devices do so. And even if you don't use ASIO-enabled Audacity and hear the computer playback late, this doesn't really matter because you can time-shift or latency adjust the recorded tracks.


Gale

[rambomhtri]

Lol, thanks for the replies. I didn't want you guys to take "offensive" or "irritating" my questions. I know this has nothing to do with Audacity (well, it has, but it's not a software problem of Audacity). May be I should have posted it in the off-topic section. AND, we're never giving our time for nothing .

Note that it is unlikely this will give you hardware playthrough but it is important that you always have the latest drivers.

Yeah, I know, indeed, I have a newer version of the driver than that you say.

No. If you uncheck "Listen to this device" for the external mic and/or mute the external mic in the Realtek control panel, you won't be able to hear the mic at all (assuming the device is working correctly).

Lol, I meant, that if I HAD hardware playthrough, I'd see a microphone slider in the sound panel control (mixer) EVEN if the "listen to this device" is disabled. But if I disable that option, nothing about microphones appears, so I do NOT have hardware playthrough, as you guys initially said.

So... I think I will buy a good USB sound card to record my guitar.

We have noticed something else very concerning on the forum. People have been making laptops with cheap, noisy USB connections making any audio connections that get power from the laptop noisy. This was not good news. It effectively peels off a lot of inexpensive audio equipment.

You can walk into a music store and see what they recommend. Given that they're going to try to up-sell you to something expensive, they may suggest with something valuable. Also google the music forums. Report back. We'd be interested in knowing.

What do you mean when you say "people make laptops"? You can buy a cheap and bad USB pci-e card for a PC, but you definitely can NOT customize a laptop, adding USB connections to the motherboard. So I don't understand that "people make laptops with cheap connections" thing. And... what do you really wanna know? I'm asking right now in music forums, but I don't know what are you asking me to discover.

Cheers!

[kozikowski]

you definitely can NOT customize a laptop

Precisely. Posters have been arriving complaining that their laptop is causing noise problems in their USB sound. USB sound devices are the solution when your built-in sound doesn't work right. Now, it's possible to get a laptop so cheap it doesn't do anything right.

It's a "Hollywood" laptop. It looks great when an actor is photographed with it on camera, but doesn't work.

The existence of really sub-standard laptops was not good news, and nowhere is it written that they stopped the trend with laptops.

The very high end ProTools audio editing suite was only recently available without an associated expensive hardware package. The custom, required hardware was the way they got around Windows PC poor but normal hardware.

So you will let is know what you find, right?

Koz

[rambomhtri]

Well, I hope mine is not a cheap-useless laptop, $1000 was the price. So you say that even USB ports are bad quality in cheap laptop than can't record well even with a USB sound card?

Of course, I'll post here what I buy and how I use it.

Cheers!

[Gale Andrews]

Note that it is unlikely this will give you hardware playthrough but it is important that you always have the latest drivers.

Yeah, I know, indeed, I have a newer version of the driver than that you say.

That may not be a good thing, if Windows downloaded that driver of its own accord. You'd hope that Lenovo would post the latest correct audio drivers...


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

So you say that even USB ports are bad quality in cheap laptop than can't record well even with a USB sound card?

There have been some posts that known good USB devices have hum that is apparently not related to the distance the device is from the computer.

There could be other reasons such as a bad USB cable or using too many other USB devices at the same time. USB ports in laptops are often on shared interrupts.

Laptop USB noise can usually be reduced by running on battery instead of mains power.


Gale

[rambomhtri]

That may not be a good thing, if Windows downloaded that driver of its own accord. You'd hope that Lenovo would post the latest correct audio drivers...

I know that not a newer driver means only improvements, but generally, the newer a driver it is better. So what's the problem of have a newer audio driver?

By the way, I've downloaded it from a driver updater I have. And I have nothing to complain about the audio drivers, everyting works great, except the software playthrough.

Anyway, If you said that a newer/older driver is not gonna fix my delay, why does it matter?

[rambomhtri]

Finally! I've fixed it!

I knew it, I knew I was right, I knew this sound card should have NO freaking delay.

Well, after searching for hours about this problem, everybody was saying "hey, listen to this device is always gonna have delay, bla, bla, bla". But even after find that, I was really confused about my sound card. How in the hell is it not gonna support hardware playthrough! I mean, it have the same jacks as my old one, everything seems to be the same, what the hell!

And 30 min ago, I've found a guy that said:

-Although the option is not where every user would search when facing microphone issues, there's a slider for the mic of the input jack that is pure hardware. You don't have to mess around Microphone options, it's PLAYBACK options where you have to find it. Go to speakers properties, and then "level" tab. There you'll find a slider for the volume of the micro plugged in through the jack.



There! Now I have no delay at all, hell yeah, as it should be. Although you guys have convinced me that I had no hardware playthrough, that new laptops have cut features from audio and all of that, I was pretty confident I didn't have that feature, but even though, I wasn't convinced completely, and today I've searched for it.

Well, now I have the next dilemma:

Is a USB sound card (10-40€) gonna record better than my laptop, better enough to worth its purchase? I know I've asked to you this quest, but I didn't understand the answer very well. I mean, is there a way I can compare 2 recording devices, as I compare processors, graphics cards... (I feel there's no such thing).

Cheers guys and thanks for the help, it's really appreciated.