• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

USB Audio Interface..school me please.

#42
if your goal is just play along with music from your computer, just plug your headphones and computer's audio output to your mixer.

if you will want to do recording, however, you need an audio interface with low latency or direct monitoring. I like the low latency way, as you may also apply FX in your computer and hear it. I had an Presonus Audiobox VSL that offered direct monitoring with loadable FX, but did not like it.

USB soundcards are not the fastest, frankly. But something like 4ms will keep you okay and it's doable on many (but not all, some are surprisingly slow) modern USB audio interfaces. Focusrite Scarlett 2gen is great (and the supplied Ableton Live Lite will make you happy and busy for some time).
 
#43
mmbongo said:
Hey I'm a pretty computer savvy guy here....but I'm a big dummy when it comes to these things and I'm trying to figure out if I need a USB audio interface.

Here's what I want to do:
I want to play audio from my computer, and play along to it on bass via headphones.

Here's how I do it now:
Bass goes into a small mixer, mixer audio out goes to computer sound card input. Headphones connected to the sound card output.

Here's the problem with how I do it now:
Latency. Theres about a half second delay when playing bass, which makes it impossible to play. It's always an issue for me, and I have one old sound card that works fine but I have to spend about 2 days trying to make it work every time I install a clean Windows (which I do about once a year). The card is very old and the drivers are unstable and I'm sick of it crashing and I'm sick of dealing with it every time I want to do something.

I've tried about 5 sound cards now, and all of them have latency. Is there a sound card that does not have latency?

Barring that, do I need a USB Audio Interface? Will that fix the latency and allow me to mix my bass with the computer audio? This is also my gaming PC (not real serious stuff though) so will a USB audio interface replace a sound card? Something like this is what I'm talking about:

Mackie Onyx Artist 1-2 USB Audio Interface

Thanks for any info!
Click to expand...
You have to play with the hardware settings in your DAW. Quality, CPU compensation, latency, etc. All these factors go into your record/playback speed. Watch some YouTube videos on it. Try searching "interface latency" for whatever program you're using.
 
#44
JeezyMcNuggles said:
You have to play with the hardware settings in your DAW. Quality, CPU compensation, latency, etc. All these factors go into your record/playback speed. Watch some YouTube videos on it. Try searching "interface latency" for whatever program you're using.
Click to expand...

I'm not even using a program though, just doing real time monitoring via the line input. It's just something that happens with newer sound cards/versions of Windows. It was never an issue with XP, and I held onto XP as long as I possibly could because of it. I even ran two computers for a while, with my old XP machine dedicated to latency free monitoring thanks to my old X-Fi ExtremeAudio card. Hopefully the audio interface will be the cure.
 
#45
mmbongo said:
I'm not even using a program though, just doing real time monitoring via the line input. It's just something that happens with newer sound cards/versions of Windows. It was never an issue with XP, and I held onto XP as long as I possibly could because of it. I even ran two computers for a while, with my old XP machine dedicated to latency free monitoring thanks to my old X-Fi ExtremeAudio card. Hopefully the audio interface will be the cure.
Click to expand...
Oh, my bad. I read the post wrong. You dont even have an interface yet. Well, why dont you run the computer output into the mixer as well, then it shouldn't be lagging at all, since its not running through the computer, it's running out instead. Then, just plug your headphones into the mixer. You can connect your computer to the mixer with a simple Aux cord.
 
#46
mmbongo said:
I'll mess around with it some tonight. When listening to music through the mixer I just lost all stereo separation and it sounded overly compressed so I figured the mixer was just sub par, or the headphone output was not stereo. Having the music quality is priority to me, as I listen to a lot of music this way. I'm using some fairly high dollar Sennheiser headphones, and the sound card I use now (a PCI-E internal card) has a 600 ohm headphone amp built into it so I'm used to hearing everything plugged directly into that headphone amp.
Click to expand...

You might try using the RCA 2-track inputs just to the right of the channel you're using. That's where I connect the line level output from the PC. You should be fine either way with a 1/8" stereo to a pair of RCA or 1/4" mono. Make sure the 1/8" is plugged all the way into the PC, not sticking out even a little bit. If not, that can easily monolize the output.
 
#47
mmbongo said:
I'm not even using a program though, just doing real time monitoring via the line input. It's just something that happens with newer sound cards/versions of Windows. It was never an issue with XP, and I held onto XP as long as I possibly could because of it. I even ran two computers for a while, with my old XP machine dedicated to latency free monitoring thanks to my old X-Fi ExtremeAudio card. Hopefully the audio interface will be the cure.
Click to expand...
Have you not read the ten plus responses here that said that a new audio interface is not the answer? You can already do it with the gear that you already own?
 
#48
shwashwa said:
Have you not read the ten plus responses here that said that a new audio interface is not the answer? You can already do it with the gear that you already own?
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the ones that said to run the computer audio out into the mixer, then connect headphones to the mixer? I've already explained multiple times why that doesn't work for me.

1) Audio quality sucks.
2) I lose my ability to record.

There are also multiple threads from people explaining they are doing exactly what I want to do, and all they use is an audio interface. I'll find out for sure tomorrow though, when my interface arrives.
 
#49
MAN this little Focusrite USB interface is just the thing I needed! It works beautifully and does (almost) everything I need. Plug it in and go..done! Zero latency, and sounds so much better than going through the mixer.

The only thing I haven't been able to do yet is 'record what you hear' (like to record something playing on Youtube or whatever) which I routinely did with my internal sound card. But if that can't be done with USB I can deal with it, I can still do it with my laptop.

Thanks to everyone who pointed me in the right direction and understood what I needed! :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chris76
#50
mmbongo said:
The only thing I haven't been able to do yet is 'record what you hear' (like to record something playing on Youtube or whatever)
Click to expand...
I have the same problem here with my scarlet solo -although admittedly I haven't tried hard enough yet to figure it out. Please post how you did it if you manage it -and I'll do the same if I figure it out myself.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mmbongo
#51
I only have recent experience with the AudioBox and Studio One 3 DAW.

If you have a decent machine with at least a i5 intel quad core you can get great results using a USB interface like the Presonus Audiobox USB. It comes with a DAW Studio One 3, and has free firmware updates. I've never had any issues with latency. Reason is the instrument's signal conversion ADA is done in the USB interface which sends the digital signal to the computer for recording. And sends the analog signal playback directly from the interface to the headphones. Thus, all the processing is done in the interface with very little computer power needed, and very little to no latency.

Using a sound card requires the PC to do the ADA conversion and if your computer or sound card is not fast enough it will have latency. Plus some OS like Win10 have software running in the background that's trying to process and translate the data so you could run into latency unless you shut down all the background running apps.

In the 90s when I started Digital Audio recording, I used a pretty powerful computer and several Interfaces that ran on computer sound cards or sound cards that came with the interface. And those had a lot of latency issues.

These new interfaces from the 2000s are better designed for eliminating latency. And the DAWs have improved greatly too.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mmbongo
#53
Soundcards can do it with very low latency, but its getting to be a driver issue now as noted. I have a Gadgetlab 424 laying around that was an awesome card in its day, and still not obsolete (records 24 bit etc.).
But, the last driver for it was in Win XP.

A USB sound interface, as I'm sure has been noted, will replace the need for a PCI card entirely. It is essentially an external sound card. There may still be buffer adjustments to be made that will affect latency, but in most cases it will "just work" right out of the box.

Good luck
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back