Latency - AGAIN!

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billwynne5
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2007/08/09 19:49:59 (permalink)

Latency - AGAIN!

Hi! New to the group here. Sorry in advance for being a pest.

I have read every forum post for the past year on latency. And I have tried every proposed solution. But I can't reduce my latency and it is SEVERE!

For starters...

AMD Athlon 64X2 (2.8 GHz Dual Core)
Soundblaster Audigy SE Sound card
Windows XP
Cakewalk Music Creator 2

I bought this PC nine months ago and have been tinkering with it - off and on - to do home recording. But the latency issue seems unsolvable. (So I keep my old PC limping along for the purpose of recording.) When I bought the new PC, I also upgraded to the Soundblaster X-Fi card but Music Creator kept barfing at the driver. (It alternate either alternately couldn't find the driver or would find the driver but insist on a WDM driver when an MME driver is supplied, and no WDM driver existed for Soundblaster X-Fi at the time. So I reinstalled the Audigy SE card.) I don't record midi, but even the analog tracks that I record (guitar, vocals, etc.) are grossly out of sync.

I have followed all tips provided previously on this forum. I have changed the sampling rate to 48000Hz, changed the number of buffers in the playback queue, and varied the buffer size from "fast" to "safe." But nothing has worked. But here is the kicker: I have done some very precise timing experiments, and tinkering with all of these variables seem to have NO effect whatsoever - that is, the sync problem kicks in at the same point in every attempt (x:xx on the timer) and I have the same degree of latency no matter where I set the variables. I also did not expect the subsequent tracks to play faster than the previous tracks.

I previously used Music Creator 1 with the Audigy SE card on an old Pentium II Windows 98 machine and I never experienced the latency problem. I used all setlings right out of the box and the sync was perfect. So I am one unhappy camper that upgrading to improve speed and audio quality has resulted in just the opposite.

I appreciate any advice you can offer. And I will humbly accept all due admonishment for cheaping out with the Soundblaster card, but - please - only after the advice. ;-)

Thanks!

Bill
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    57Gregy
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    RE: Latency - AGAIN! 2007/08/09 21:54:27 (permalink)
    Did you disable the onboard sound card? Aren't ASIO drivers available for this sophisticated piece of audio hardware? ASIO would be much faster than WDM or MME.
    Okay, I just read a little about this device. It is switchable for gaming, entertainment or recording. You probably read all this already. Make sure it's set to audio creation mode. It does have ASIO drivers, and claims latency as low as 1 ms. A fast PC such as yours should be able to approach that mark. It also has a routing mixer, from which you select inputs/outputs, etc.
    Anyway, try disabling the onboard, update the ASIO driver, set the mixer settings, both SB and Windows, turn everything on, open MC, run the wave profiler, make sure the sampling rate in MC and the SB match.
    Greg

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