Latency issues: need guidance please

[Rockin John]

About 5 years after buying Cubase SE 1.7 I decided to bite the bullet and try (really hard!!) to find out how to use it as I want to do some recording.

I've learned enough to know how to record stuff, and I know how to play it back through the PCs external speakers. And I also know how to playback and record at the same time. But... when I listen to my previous recording and record another track at the same time, there is a delay between the two tracks when played back together.

Is this what's known as latency?

I use one of those Behringer USB input modules to get the audio into the PC.

My knowledge is really limited on this stuff so I would appreciate any wisdom that will both help me with digital audio, gererally, and that which might show me what to do about the specific problem described.

Thanks guys.

John

[TrevorOfDoom]

yup, that's latency.
now i'm not knowledgeable enough to know what causes that, or how to fix it properly, but i do know a cheap trick.
if the whole track if off, just nudge it over until it lines up.
works for me.

[Rockin John]

Yeah, thanks. I thought it was.

I, too, thought about nudging the track to make it fit. I've not figured how to do that yet. But I supposed it would need some kind of marker on both tracks so that lining up is accurate and easy. Erm, maybe the metronome or maybe there's some 'snap to fit' method of doing this within Cubase?

I figured that, surely, lining up track within time must be a very common issue?

Thanks for your input, ToD.

John

[fretlessrock]

A common way to prevent this is to use an interface with 'hardware monitoring", so you hear the input before an conversion/processing delay happens. Other ways to reduce latency are: turn off all effects on the input (the instrument you are recording); only run as many output channels as needed; experiment with your buffer settings; make sure you are running no other processes (internet connection, virus protection, dopey utilities...).

Good Luck

[locolobo85]

First question is usually, what audio drivers are you using? ASIO is recommended and has fixed a lot of problems for people.

I also believe that lower buffer settings can help with this problem.

[Charling]

Yeah I would check your driver first, make sure you are using the right one. You need to go to devices>device setup>find the page where you choose the driver and make sure its the right one (i imagine it will be called behringer asio driver or maybe just a standard asio driver)

on this page it may (im not certain on the version of cubase you are using) tell you the latency, so you can see which driver gives you the lowest number (usually in milliseconds). thats the best place to start and the right driver will nearly always give you low enough latency to get on straight away!

there will also probably be some options on this page perhaps a checkbox for 'low latency mode' and a few options to give audio processing a higher priority etc.

[Rockin John]

Charling my Cubase is: Cubase SE 1.7. (as I said in the opening line of the original post )

The audio system is the PC's onboard using a Realtek AC97 CODEC. I have the latest ASIO driver running it but, unfortunately, the hardaware won't support Hardware Monitoring as that tick box is greyed out, and it doesn't support ASIO2.

I have to admit that this PC's audio setup is the basic thing that gives the user some sort of sound out! Maybe not too crappy in many ways, but certainly not music production quality by a very long way!

The Behringer is a USB interface which XP finds and installs on first setup. No worries there I don't think.

I have a bid or two on at Ebay for a Creative audio card that should solve the the Hardware Monitoring issue, hopefully. (I don't have a manual for the PC's mainboard but hopefully I'll find a jumper to change or a BIOS setting to change that'll allow me to slip in an audio card).

I'm reasonably good with playing with XP, but just don't have any music-audio skills at all!

Thanks for the help and advice.

John

[Charling]

Originally Posted by Rockin John

Charling my Cubase is: Cubase SE 1.7. (as I said in the opening line of the original post )

John

hehe yeah I meant I dont know if the options are different on that version as I have only used SX 2 and above!

Ok so yeah, what gre107 says below is very important, using two soundcards at the same time on a PC is a tricky subject. Its possible with a bit of fiddling to get it to work but in most situations you wouldnt want to do this. as latency and stability is likely to be an issue. you can do it quite easily so that a few different programs use different cards as there output which can be useful, but with a single program communicating with multiple devices i'd imagine problems are rife. Im not saying unsortable (im sure theres a third party program that can sort it) but tricksy.

if the behringer device has only an input I would imagine it is not really designed for tracking, more as a general easy interface for recording very basic stuff, if it does have an output use this or link it to a little external desk to get more routing options.

I would avoid most of the creative audio cards if the idea is to use it purely for recording, they are good little consumer upgrades for soundcards but are not that good for recording on, at least most that I have tried. you can get plenty internal and external recording cards for really cheap these days and they are generally more sutied to recording work! edirol, m-audio and emu do some good starter soundcards that will record your signal ok, but dont expect it to sound like the beatles

lastly, on sx there is a way to get to a panel for the normal asio driver of your pc which gives you more options for latency. if you switch cubase to use the windows driver and then go to expert/advance settings or similar (or it might say 'show panel or similar, i cant remember) you may get up a more advanced set of options for latency where you can type in your desired latency in samples. This is something i did on my old pc with the basic soundcard and you can lower latency considerably but those outputs really arent up to the job of near zero latency monitoring for recording purposes!

but you may get it to useable level, sorry, i'd like to be more specific but I dont want to give you instructions that don't exist for your version of cubase! On my version the option of using a usb device for input with another device for output is not there, you choose the driver for your hardware and that is it. as I say third party programs can do this but are adding another link in in a very sensitive chain and as such instability can be an issue! not really ideal for recording. I guess there is a possibility that the behringer was designed to work with the onboard soundcard directly, kind of on a different layer of the windows architecture to that which you are controlling from cubase, but in my experience that would be very unorthadox and like nothing I have seen before. I may be wrong though!

these days im on a mac, and using as many soundcards you want at the same time on leapord is absolutely no problem, its great. But they are very expensive for what they are, you pay through the ear for the little things!

[gre107]

Do not use the sound card from the PC to listen to the music being played back.
Use the external (or phones) out from your USB interface. It's more than likely that your sound card cannot handle the processing that it would require to do that.

I'm speaking from experience...!