any body know why?

[shambler]

Hi all
I'm new to home recording. Been playing guitar, mandola, mandolin for about 30 years, been on computers for about 10 years. Finally, due to health reasons I can't gig at the moment, so decided to record at home. Prevous to this I've recorded in studios, and even owned a 4-track, but never tried to use a computer to record.

I'll tell you whats happened. I have bought a creative sound blaster live! usb. tried it with ntrack, audicity and reaper, and got what i now know is (thanks to your forum) called latency. a delay of about 0.6 of a second on second or third tracks. almost every time. a real pain. So then I tried reaper on one of my other comps, using the onboard sound card, Nvidea I believe, and it worked fine, no delay, nothing wrong. So I uninstalled the Creative usb card and turned back on the Nvidea in the first comp, and that worked fine too.

Question: is the usb card anygood, or is there something I'm missing, or not set correctly? Or should I buy a
E-MU 0404? which would allow me to record more than one track/instrument at a time, I believe.

Comp is: amd2700+ gig of memory, 2x80 gig drives (can't remember what speed they turn at) 9800 pro graphics.

[brandondrury]

I've never tried to use Soundblaster for anything but mp3 listening at my brother's house. Either way, the latency should not be 600 milliseconds. There is obviously a problem.

Since I don't know much about your specific hardware, I'll give you some advice that is more general in nature.

#1 - Drivers. This sounds like a driver problem. Have you downloaded the latest drivers? You may need to uninstall the current drivers first.

#2 - Certain soundcards hate certain Chipsets in motherboards. You may need to do a Google search for "your chipset your soundcard" and see if anything turns up. This is a bigger deal than you think. I just had a hell of a week dealing with the security USK key for Cubase SX. My recording computer kept on telling me that the USB key had malfunctioned. Well, after reading deep down into the Steinberg support, it turned out that my Chipset didn't agree with USB. I slapped in a PCI card with USB on it and the problem was immediately solved!

I've never used a USB soundcard before, but you may want to try running it into a PCI USB card (I'm assuming you are using integrated USB).

#3 I've never used any of the free programs out there (although there are many happy people who have). Do they give you driver choices? I know that some of the programs I've used have given the option to select between various drivers when using a soundcard. Often times, the wrong driver will crank up the latency to something stupidly high (like 600 ms).

[shambler]

#2 - Certain soundcards hate certain Chipsets in motherboards.? You may need to do a Google search for "your chipset your soundcard" and see if anything turns up.?




I've never used a USB soundcard before, but you may want to try running it into a PCI USB card (I'm assuming you are using integrated USB).?


Thanks for the advice, I'll do the google thing for conflicts. The promlem with usb is that it uses the CPU rather than the sound card for its thinking, which is not a good idea, so I intend to go to maplins later and get a PCI sound card, with 2 x mic inputs, and a line in. just to try. it should allow me to record 2 inputs, using the stereo mic?
I'll also try the usb pci card route, as i have one here somewhere, in my 'box of old bits' we all have!

[richiebee]

If your Creative card has a control panel, you may also be able to reduce latency there too by increasing the buffer size. You could also try ASIO4ALL. It's a general purpose ASIO driver that has been known to significantly reduce latency (a Google search will find the source).

Creative sound cards have been sniggered at by the pro audio community for years, but in reality it should give you good performance. They're certainly not bad... certianly not as bad as most motherboard sound cards.

There was a time not so long ago when latency was just something we had to deal with because computers couldn't handle it any other way!


Rich

[shambler]

ASIO4ALL I've now got it, but don't understand what it is. I'll install it when I can turn off some other things I'm running at the moment. The buffer size I'll see to as well. all this computer audio stuff is so new to me I feel like I'm beginning all over again.

[brandondrury]

computer audio stuff is so new to me I feel like I'm beginning all over again.

That's funny, I felt the same way 3 days ago when I had my home computer, recording computer, and work computer all in pieces on my living room floor...each one with BIG problem. Of course, all 3 are back in business now, so maybe i'm not a beginner afterall. ;D

In all seriousness, I don't know how a person would become a recording guy using a computer without becoming a computer master as well. Then again, you could probably "fake it" and pretend you have great computer knowledge by reading the instructions and come out with a great computer recording system. It's just when the computer has problems that you need this knowledge.

ASIO4ALL I've now got it, but don't understand what it is.

I think it's a driver that should work fairly well on many sound cards.


I'm not sure what your budget is, but you can snag some pretty decent PCI soundcards from M-audio for around $160 on Musician's Friend. I'm not sure if you'll ever need 4 inputs, but I know one card (I think the Delta 44 or Delta 66) has 4 inputs and is quite a bit less than $200. Just a thought.

Brandon

[shambler]

I tried AISO4ALL and somehow it stopped all input signal. I really need to adjust the settings and have another go. But on the good side I've sorted out how to record 2 instruments at once, using the stereo channells on the mike input. One on left, and one on right. Unfortunatly at the moment I get a fair bit of bleed across the channels. I've only done it with solid bodied guitar and banjo, so I know its not mikes bleeding across. Then I must get some speakers that will handle some power, or use my P.A. foldback amp. its only 100watts, and the speakers are 2 way H+H, and will handle 100watts each.

so - does anybody know how to stop the channells bleeding across?

[brandondrury]

Hey shambler ,

I've never attempted this with a non recording soundcard, but when I select a track on my system, I simply grab the left side as input #1 and the right side as input#2.

How are you feeding your soundcard? In other words where are the channels combining (which causes the bleed)? Is it the soundcard doing it?

It just seams to me that there should virtually no bleed between the left and right channel on any decent soundcard.

Brandon

[shambler]

i have finally managed after using 3 sound cards, the onboard, the creative and a maplins 'white box' job to get no bleed across the channels. I ghosted a clean image before starting, and after each attempt had to install the ghost, to make sure I had a clean comp.

I ended up 'making' a lead with a 3.5 mm male to go in the sound card, and 2 x 6mm male jacks on the other, to go in the outputs of the 2 pedals I intend to use to to balance the input levels. that works, at last. I also had to go back to the AC97 onboard sound, it being the best quality I have at the moment.

I also got AISO4ALL working properly!

Now - my only problem is this.... If I am recording 2 tracks at once, no problems, but if I record one track, and then try to record a second track, (or if I have recorded 2 at once and then try to do a third) the ones I have already recorded get recorded on the new track, along with the instrument I (or Helen the Goth) are playing.
This must be so simple to sort, but I can't figure it out.

Shambler (and Helen the Goth)

[brandondrury]

Now - my only problem is this.... If I am recording 2 tracks at once, no problems, but if I record one track, and then try to record a second track, (or if I have recorded 2 at once and then try to do a third) the ones I have already recorded get recorded on the new track, along with the instrument I (or Helen the Goth) are playing.

Well, there are a few ways that this could be occuring.
A) How are you monitoring? In other words, where is the output of the soundcard going. It's possible that a signal could be going out of your soundcard into your mixer and combine with the your new track before coming back into the soundcard.

B) There is something in the soundcard itself that is causing this. Is the soundcard full duplex? What soundcard are you using right now? This could be some sort of option that may be selectable in some menu for the soundcard.

Brandon