Hi all
 
Was wondering if anyone can offer advice about anything I might be missing here?
 
I've been using this week to try and finish a batch of songs I've had lying round for a while.
 
I've been using the same technique and settings to record vocals. This is to plug the mic in to my Komplete Audio 6, create an audio track in my X3, arm the track, and switch input echo on so I can hear the song as I'm singing along (it's too quiet without input echo, and I want to hear my voice through effects).  
 
An all but one song this produces a light chorus effect which I am more than happy to deal with. However there's one song which produces a very noticeable and off-putting delay when I turn input echo on. I'm not sure why as the driver and latency settings (as far as I can see) have been set identically to the other songs. I can flick between this song and any other, and watch the latency disappear in an instant, and then return again when I load this one song. I even tried with dry vocals to make sure I didn't have the fx set up differently, but I get the same result.
 
Can anyone think of anything I might have missed? It's driving me mad!
 
Thanks in advance
 
Andy 
 
 

Are you also monitoring from your interface?
 
What are your reported latency values in Sonar?
 
What happens if you hit 'E' on your computer keyboard to bypass all effects, and then try it?  (Hit 'E' again after testing, to turn effects back on)
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi Bob
 
My effective latency is 4.4 msec.
 
I tried turning off all the effects and it worked, so thanks very much for your advice. On reflection this song has a lot more going on in the background than the others and more tracks. Didn't realise having effects running in the background was likely to cause latency.
 
I guess the lesson is to keep the effects running in the background to a minimum if I want to use input echo.
 
Andy

It really depends on which effects are present.
 
Certain plugins, like Perfect Space and Boost 11, are simply not meant to be used for tracking/recording.  The nature of how they process adds a bunch of latency, and that will always be the case.  The 'fix' for that is to only add those kind of effects once all the recording is finished, and you have moved on to mixing.  Then, add in those kinds of latency-inducing plugins and jack your ASIO Buffer Size way up to accommodate the increased latency from the 'mixing plugins'.  Because the latency is at that point quite high, you will simply not be happy trying to record, which is why you only use them in the mixing process, where high latency doesn't matter.
 
So, bottom line - use low-latency plugins while recording, or no plugins (some folks do that), and keep latency low.  Then, add whatever plugins you wish for mixing, and adjust the ASIO Buffer Size accordingly.  You need to know the consequences of any plugins you plan to use, so you can avoid the situation where you have the plugins added already and then find out there is a problem.
 
Effects that use look-ahead processing or chew up CPU, are not likely to work well while recording, so do your research ahead of time, and you will be much happier.
 
I hope that makes sense.
 
Bob Bone