Zet]ro latency monitiring

Hi all still pondering about buying a new V Studio 700 system.
I have a few questins which need answering so I hope some of you guys cam put me right.
 
Heres the situation, i have a  profesional studio currently and want to down size as i will be retiring to France soon. I have been looking at the 700 and on the face of it even with the compatability isses with X2 i am still interested. (i dont mind even having to downgrade to 8.5 if it works).
So heres my queries.
I need to be able to set up a headphone mix lets say for a singer. They will need to hear the backing however also need some FX on their vocals, but not have it printed to a track. Second i would like to record at the same time an acoustic guitar again with FX and a headphone mix, some what different to the singers mix. I can currently do all this and much more as i use a Yamaha 02r 96 and this is all at zero latency.
Question is can i do all this with the 700 system?
Many thanks for you help.
 

Edit - describing wrong method. Will come back to this when I've thought it through.

OK, so the problem here is that you can set up fairly sophisticated routing for headphne mixes and effects while recording so on via Sonar itself, but that means introducing latency. Depending on your computer and the complexity of the project, this may be low enough to work with; it's certainly worth exploring.

Using direct monitoring instead is possible, but with some limitations.

For direct monitring, you only have three output options, "Main", "Sub" and "Digital 1". These are all stereo.

You can't route individual inputs to different outs for monitoring, they're just either on or off.

I've done a fudge for recording singers with reverb in their headphones a few times. I have their mic coming in on one channel, and the direct mix outputs for both Main and Sub on. The singer is listening on headphones to just the Main output.

I then patch in a hardware reverb (I just use a cheap pedal for this myself) to the sub output and bring it back in on another input channel. The reverb is set to fully wet as you would for a bus effect. This then also apears in the singer's headphones.

You've probably already realised the problem with this, which is that the reverb signal coming back in will also be going out of the SUB output and back to the reverb and into an infinite loop. In parctise, I find that with low levels of reverb, I do ok, and it doesn't go into a big feedback howl.

The other obvious limitation here is that you end up with monitoring reverb on everything. I haven't figured out a way of doing it ore selectively.

So there you go; bit of a cludge, but it can be useful.

To be honest, for the scenario you describe, I would try to get your latency low enough and do it through software. That way, you have access to far more outputs, and can set up different headphone mixes. You don't really have that in direct monitoring (you can do two different headphone mixes, but that requires using the Sub output, so you can't do it at the same time as my reverb trick).

Ah, that's a good point. You could direct monitor the instruments and software monitor just the vocals with reverb on. So the latency hit would be lower.

Hi guys, thanks for the info.
It all seem a bit coveluted and not something you just throw together. One of my bigest problems in running a pro studio is time, with the setup i have 02r96 i just dial in whatever i need for the client (to make them feel happy it takes seconds) and away we go,  recording evertyhing totaly dry. Maybe the 700 is not the way to go for me. i think i need to explore other options. A very expensive unit i was realy hoping for more versitility no the recording side, however it look like mixing on the 700 would be a dream. All done in the box.
OH well :)

Hey John is it not possible to set up a signal flow for example where the input signal comes in and goes out direct via the direct mixer with zero latency monitoring to the output (Main for example) The input signal could also be routed into Sonar and the reverb created there. Now in Sonar you don't monitor the input/dry signal but rather the reverb only.

That way you will hear the direct signal or dry with no latency and the reverb effect might have a very small latency which could be perceived as a form of pre delay. ie it should be OK. That way you would not have to use the reverb pedal the way you are now. Just a thought.

Also the Octa Capture mentioned above (for the OP) has added versatility in the area of headphone mixes etc..

A digital mixer connected to a DAW is far more powerful than anything the V Studio system can do. I think the problem of setting up the input monitoring and headphone mixes with effects etc is one thing and that can be solved but the much larger problem is really how the V Studio works with the latest version of Sonar and when and if they fix that.

Jeff Evans


Hey John is it not possible to set up a signal flow for example where the input signal comes in and goes out direct via the direct mixer with zero latency monitoring to the output
 

It certainly is, I do it all the time, and that's part of the process I describe above. Are we talking about different things here?

Zeth


Let me elaberate,
I only record live instruments, i dont use virtual instruments. 

Then no need for the VS-700R, grab an Octa-Capture with the console. Apparently they sound the same. No Fantom. No ADAT I/O either, but you can link 2 of them for 16 mic pres and stereo spdif I/O. Auto-sens is killer according to users here. 8 direct/no latency stereo headphone mixes possible, 2 with hardware reverb/echo, for the price of one VS-700R...

I have a three pice band to record, two acoustic guitars, one bass, and three vocals. Thes guys want to do it live, (record all at the same time). Each want their own headphone mix, each want reverb on their vocals. 

See above. As Jeff said, a software reverb work nicely. Set pre-delay to shortest and the system latency will add a very short one for you. Work awesome and remember, with 2x octa-capture you get 2x hardware reverb, so less stress on the system.

I want to record each instrument and vocal to its own track in sonar without any FX reverb etc, so i can add it later at the mix stage. 

Yes that will work.

Currently i can do all of this with my 02r96 system at zero latency. 
However i want to down size my system and I am looking for a smaller system such as the V700. I cant see how this would be done on the V 700 without incuring latency throug the drivers and fx processing. 

Yeah that won't work easily and that's been a frustration for me. I tried to figure a lot of options and the Octa-Capture one is one them, paired with a Presonus HP-60.


I finally grabbed a Furman HDR-6 and 2x HS-6 for monitoring. VS-R's direct mixer left/right to channels 1/2 (I pan to L/R to create mono sub-mixes on each channels), outboard pre direct out to 3/4, Sonar Mix to stereo input. Reverb in the box. Works like a dream and musicians don't bother me anymore ;)

edit: ah yeah, you need an D/A converter for this setup cause sub and main out's level are both adjusted with the volume knob. So you have to use the digital 1 out in the Direct Mixer tab... 

 Can all of the above be done using the V Studio 700 at zero latency. 

With Octa-Capture Yes. But as Jeff said, latency or "pre-delay" is not an issue with fx like reverb or delay ;) The vs drivers are very good and with a good i7 machine (or i5, they are cheap as hell) you'll find latency should not be a problem with reverb at all.

 

feel free to buy mine.......in excellent condition.  its on ebay right now.  pm me for details.  comes with original box.  used in pro environment.

 in fact an all in one pc with touch may be the way to go.

been there, done that. now the touch all-in-one pc is nailed to the wall for tracking jam sessions where you don't have to do much other than pull up a few templates, arm tracks, push record ... i tried to use it seriously for a while but always ended up being better off (faster & more accurate) with the mouse ... so after the touch experience I bought a real control surface ...
 
of course, that was x1 and win7 and everything is moved with index fingers these days ...