Cheap AtoD converters outperform PC's

[teesquared]

I have tried using my PC which is 2.4ghz dual core 4Gb ram running Win7 64bit for effects and recording. The internal sound card chip has a lot of latency and so I've tried using external units Roland and Yamaha for capture. Although better they still suffer so much latency that its impossible to play and monitor real-time.

I have 2 Korg digital multiple effects units. Neither of which cost me over $50 and therefore have cheapo AD/DA converters. These stand alone units have good modelling features and dont have any "perceptable" latency.

So what is happening here? I know that a PC has lots of OS overheads but even if I run the PC with most unnceccesary services shut down it makes no difference.

Would a top of the line external A>D capture unit work any better?


Regards

Tee.

[kurotenshi]

I think you have to tune your computes because I have an old AMD FX64 dual 1.6 with 4gb ram and win7 64bit and both my cheap behringer USB and the TASCAM iU2 allow me to play guitar rig with enough low latency to play real time with drumtrack on the background.

The problem with the cheap AD/DA is not the speed/latency, is the sound quality and, if you sacrifice quality you lower latency.

[stingray69]

You should try ASIO4ALL if you're getting unsatisfactory latency lag. It sure did the trick for me. Not sure what recording software you have, just get to the area in your recording software where you can select what recording drivers you want to use and look for the ASIO driver after you install it.

[teesquared]

Thanks for the advice, I've tried using Cubase 4 A.I. (Which hates Asio for all),and also Audacity. Audacity was a bit better (i.e. it worked), but based on you guys I need to try again and tweek the latency settings.

Thanks vm for the replies.

Tee.

[kurotenshi]

Originally Posted by stingray69

You should try ASIO4ALL if your you are getting unsatisfactory latency lag. It sure did the trick for me. Not sure what recording software you have, just get to the area in your recording software where you can select what recording drivers you want to use and look for the ASIO driver after you install it.

Ah yes, I forgot that, I also use ASIO4ALL with all my boards and that really does the trick.
Google for guides to tune Windows for audio work and try as much as you can to close everything you can before working with this kind of software.
You appear to be working with basic software so try EnergyXT, it is very light on the CPU, also I've been using Studio One and it seems to me that it is lighter than Cubase.