Hi,
I just finished watching the video on DAw's which was great. I like to mention a bit on the biggest problem with DAW's - "latency". I previously only experianced this problem when I was recording Midi in real time using my Roland GR-09 guitar synth which produced a significant amount of latency, nearly a secound. It was able to fix the problem by sliding the track to the left and quantising the track. I never had much of a problem with my audio recordings before untill just recently. I had a friend of mine drop around a Samson G-Tracks USB Microphone to try in January of this year. As I had just written a new song I decided to use this device as my interface to PC as it has both Microphone capabilities and a input for intruments. I was not expecting any latency, the thought never occurred to me of this problem. So I went ahead and put down six tracks, 4 x guitar and 2 x vocal tracks. I did not realy listen too it too closely untill I had finished the sixth track as it was only a demo to see how I would arrange the song etc. But to my horror I noticed the timing in places where way out. At first I thought it was me not keeping in time to the midi metronome while recording or I flicked my lighter too many times :). So I decided to create a simple midi drum track to keep time with (kick, snare & high hat). This I thought would be easier to hear so I would keep in time. Well I put down a guitar track and discovered I was still out, I tried agian thinking it was me, but the secound take was stll out. The next take I really concertrated on my timing and new I was in the groove this time. When I played it back I discovered it was still out. Luckily I had recorded the third take into a seperate track and had not deleted the secound recording of the guitar. When I played both guitar tracks back, with out the midi drum track they where in perfect time. Thats when I realised I had a big latency problem so to check it out I plugged the out put of my sound card into the intrument input of the Samson G-tracks Mic and recored the Midi drums into a seperate track. The result was nearly a 16th of a secound out, very distint with the drums. I wondered at how I could fix this problem, I needed to gauge the exact amount it was behind so could slide each track back into its exact timing position. The way I did this was by cutting a secound off the begining of my recorded audio of the drums, marking and writing down the exact starting position of this track. I then zoomed in and slid the track to the left so it was in perfect time with the midi track (trial and error). Once I was happy with the result I was able get an exact measurement of the amount I had slid it to the left. This amount then was used to silde each recorded track back into exact position. I noticed Alan didn't elaborate on the prcedure to fix latency so this info could be of some use to anybody with the same problem. As the G-tracks is a seperate audio PC device (like a sound card) it was easily accomplised.
But if you only have one Sound device installed on your PC you could try having the midi drums output comming from the left channel only and record it back into the right channel to gauge the latency you have without the feed back problem you would normaly get when doing this. Note some sound cards my freak out with this and still howl, if you find you can't do this then I suggest insatalling a second sound card into your PC to fix this. I know IRQs conflicts can cause problems with this but you can reserve the cards IRQ, and you can always diable your com ports and printer port to free up IRQ's with they are not being used. I have an older P111 800, which still has ISA slots and I have a Roland Rap10 and a Sound blaster live both installed in this pc which I use to record my midi into audio.The Roland card still to this day has the best midi voices I have heard, the standard GS wavetable that comes wth XP comes no where near the sounds this card produces.
I have an example of the latency problem I encounted while using the G-Traks USB mic on my web site for you to hear at
http://www.rodroger.com/rr/rodrogers_bands_artists_news.html
The sample is about half way down the page (look for the guitar icon) just under my demo with the huge latency problem, have listen to this Demo as well to see the problem I caused myself by not paying attention. You may ask why I have posted this demo with the problems on my site. Normally I would not have but as this song is in dedication to a lost little friend at the end of last year and was recorded not for fame and fortune but for pure love.
Its like putting a wooden cross on a grave untill you have the head stone. I am not ashamed of the result, even though it has huge problems, as it was recorded from the heart.
My final thought here is if you are using a USB device (not the fastest PC interface as interfaces go), check it's latency first and work out what you need to do before proceding with your recording so you don't screw it up like I did. :)
Latency
Wed, 2010-03-10 18:41
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But if you only have one Sound device installed on your PC you could try having the midi drums output comming from the left channel only and record it back into the right channel to gauge the latency you have without the feed back problem you would normaly get when doing this. Note some sound cards my freak out with this and still howl, if you find you can't do this then I suggest insatalling a second sound card into your PC to fix this. I know IRQs conflicts can cause problems with this but you can reserve the cards IRQ, and you can always diable your com ports and printer port to free up IRQ's with they are not being used. I have an older P111 800, which still has ISA slots and I have a Roland Rap10 and a Sound blaster live both installed in this pc which I use to record my midi into audio.The Roland card still to this day has the best midi voices I have heard, the standard GS wavetable that comes wth XP comes no where near the sounds this card produces.
I have an example of the latency problem I encounted while using the G-Traks USB mic on my web site for you to hear at
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Very interesting article. Content has been written in very nice manner. I enjoy reading this kind of stuff. Thanks for sharing good knowledge.
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You did some amazing work on this video. Your tools are so great to see. Keep up the amazing work.
You did some amazing work on this video. Your tools are so great to see. Keep up the amazing work
One little tip, try a medium cost 'large condenser' for the kick, placed outside but not too far away the sound hole and add EQ where appropriate.
I just read through the entire article of yours.I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic.Thanks for the share.
OMG SPAMALLOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What you should look into my friend is investing in a faster computer and a better "more professional" interface!
Ive got a fairly fast computer that was originally specd for running games,
(2 gig RAM, 2.87ghz dual processor, 400Gigs Hard Disk space, etc...).
My main "recording tool" however is my Interface! Sporting a cheap Tascam US-144!
It gets SOME latency "sometimes" when I'm recording multiple tracks of the same "software plug-in Instrument", such as an electric keyboard or synth.
Some rigs just get it I think, Ive been to a gentlemen home studio where he had a pro Pro-tools rig (an 8000$ setup), and he would get latency issues constantly!! After 8000$!!!! I sent maybe a couple hundred and I rarely have issues!
Not sure what else I can really tell you my friend, rather than Good luck and god speed! =D
"Who says you need a guitar" - Jack White
This sounds funny, but use the latency. I've found myself in sticky situations before after the band has gone home to England or whatever, I crank up the tracks and.... oh NO! My MOTU timer is going nuts and I'm left with a pounding heart and scratching my head. Many times you can get the tracks close to where they need to be manually, when you can do this simply use whatever latency is left as added verb. It will sound pretty awful in your in ear headphones but once you take them off and hear the tracks in the room, or rip it to CD real quick and do the drive test, you'll find that it can add a cool twist on the song. Of course, make sure you communicate that to the band and let them hear it as well before you move on.
Well it depends on the sound driver you are currently using. I've recently heard an article saying that sound drivers are very important if you want to avoid the problem of latency. I've face the same issue when I recorded a video some months ago. It kind of scared me because I didn't understand the reason. I must mention that I had just bought the newest sound driver that day. Anyway, I made a big mistake because I paid a lot of money and after that I found out that there was another driver much more better than the one I had and much more cheaper.
I avoided the whole PC/MAC based DAW thing up until this last year (device driver issues make me crazy) by using a dedicated Yamaha DAW in my home studio (AW16G) which had it's own issues, but latency wasn't one of them.
I've switched over to a Macbook Pro and Logic Express with a Presonus Firestudio 2626 interface.
For Multi-tracking the "Low Latency Mode" of Logic Express works quite well, not sure what the actual delay is but its down in the tens of millisecond range (As an experiment I blended my live guitar sound externally with the "software monitor" copy of the same guitar and found that the latency was small enough to produce a slight phase effect, but no audible delay between the note attacks. No need to "fix" it, quite usable as is.
For live mixing the Presonus and others now offer low latency "Direct Monitoring" as well, the mix output doesn't have to go into the DAW software and back out. (They call it zero latency, but there's no such thing - it's as close to zero as practical, but it's not zero.. speed of light makes sure of that)..
What youre saying is completely true. I know that everybody must say the same thing, but I just think that you put it in a way that everyone can understand. I also love the images you put in here. They fit so well with what youre trying to say. Im sure youll reach so many people with what youve got to say.
Hi Guys-
I have had numerous latency issues with my system until I got so fed up with it, I ended up
buying a Tascam 2488 NEO stand alone recorder and I just pass all audio from my computer via SPDIF to it, and it works flawlessly now. I can't afford to spend thousands on a Pro Tools HD system and waste valuable time going through sound cards and all that, so, the Tascam seems to do the trick. I can even do Mastering on it and burn CD's! You can create an entire album with this machine, it's incredible. I watched a video on YouTube with Alan Parsons endorsing it and he says it's great, so, I took his advice. I can mix drum tracks on the computer, then transfer it to the Tascam and dedicate it to a track or tracks. It's really amazing. The Tascam has inserts for effects and such, so, you can insert outboard EQ's, or any rack effect you want on any of your tracks. It even has 250 virtual tracks! If you want to give it try and your frustrated with computers, try the NEO 2488. It takes all that away!
Buy one on Ebay from $400 to $600. Awesome :)