I have an HP Pavilion dv6500 laptop with all stock hardware. Im running windows vista with no outboard gear.
soundcard is the conexant high definition smartaudio HD2,
processor is the AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core Processor TK-55
I'm running Sonar 6 and the issue I'm having is when I try to record audio. Playback seems to run just fine but the only way I'm able to record is to have the input monitor engaged. The problem then is that I am only hearing the echo. It comes thru delayed which makes it difficult to record. I thought it might be a latency issue but when I increase the latency the sound becomes very degraded. I'm wondering if it is just the sound card. Thanks

Im running windows vista with no outboard gear.

Hi Rick and welcome to the forum. Your query comes up every so often, and to save beating about the bush, your final statement, "I'm wondering if it is just the sound card" is in fact, alomst certainly correct. You have a first class software DAW application in Sonar, and you really need a quality soundcard / audio interface to do it justice. The quality of the D/A and A/D converters in most if not all laptop onboard soundcards will be nothing like the quality needed, particularly for recording. Also you need to use either an ASIO or WDM driver to get best practical latency out of any soundcard, you don't say what driver you are currently using. There are loads of options for you out there, depending on budget and usage, either Firewirw or USB connected. Let us know a bit more about your current driver for the onboard soundcard and let's see if we can't offer you some help to optimise what you have currently, but really, a quality audio interface IMO should be the next step for you.

This thread a bit further down the forum tonight might get you on the right track Rick, at the time of my writing the thread has developed a bit more than yours, and its all related to onboard soundcards

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1492201


Peace Love and Understanding

Garry Kiosk

EDIT: My lousy speed typing

It comes thru delayed which makes it difficult to record. I thought it might be a latency issue but when I increase the latency the sound becomes very degraded. I'm wondering if it is just the sound card. Thanks

If its delayed then you dont need to raise your latency, you need to lower it..You need it under 5ms

+10101011100 For what Kiosk posted above
Cj

Maybe the Conexant card isn't capable of direct monitoring?

Just a guess. Hopefully somebody can help you out, although few here are using ultra low-end audio interfaces and the ones that do are reluctant to admit it:)

Welcome to the forum, Rick.

high definition. what does that mean? Its a $0.50 sound chip meant for Media player and games. It works great for that but its not ideally suited to digital audio production. Take the good advice of the others and get a good solid current audio interface.

Yes welcome to the forum.

ORIGINAL: John
high definition. what does that mean? Its a $0.50 sound chip meant for Media player and games. It works great for that but its not ideally suited to digital audio production. Take the good advice of the others and get a good solid current audio interface.

Yes welcome to the forum.

It means capable of supporting hi-def output for hi-def DVD (Blu Ray, HD DVD, etc.) playback... 24-bit, up to 192kHz, multichannel surround, etc.

The specs of those chips aren't bad in terms of capability, with high sample rate support, spdif, etc.... however, the quality of the componentry (clock, etc.) is, of course, still consumer grade. In any event, with proper drivers it should still be possible to use such devices at reasonable latencies. The problem is getting proper drivers... I think Noel mentioned something about improved support for HD audio in the fine print thread -- I assume he's talking about HD onboard chips.

In the meantime the OP can try ASIO4ALL.

ORIGINAL: keith

ORIGINAL: John
high definition. what does that mean? Its a $0.50 sound chip meant for Media player and games. It works great for that but its not ideally suited to digital audio production. Take the good advice of the others and get a good solid current audio interface.

Yes welcome to the forum.

It means capable of supporting hi-def output for hi-def DVD (Blu Ray, HD DVD, etc.) playback... 24-bit, up to 192kHz, multichannel surround, etc.

The specs of those chips aren't bad in terms of capability, with high sample rate support, spdif, etc.... however, the quality of the componentry (clock, etc.) is, of course, still consumer grade. In any event, with proper drivers it should still be possible to use such devices at reasonable latencies. The problem is getting proper drivers... I think Noel mentioned something about improved support for HD audio in the fine print thread -- I assume he's talking about HD onboard chips.

In the meantime the OP can try ASIO4ALL.

LOL that was a rhetorical question.

You could try if Asio4All driver works better.

Junski

Great Jusnki! I had the same problem as Rick and the ASIO4ALL driver soved the problem with the Conexant HD audio board.

ORIGINAL: John

high definition. what does that mean? Its a $0.50 sound chip meant for Media player and games. It works great for that but its not ideally suited to digital audio production. Take the good advice of the others and get a good solid current audio interface.

Portability is what laptops do. They are indispensable sometimes because of that and cluttering 'em up with outboard gear can sometimes be in direct conflict with the great idea of portability.

John: Did you not know that High Definition in this context is a specification for Audio laid down by Microsoft as a standard for Windows Audio?...and guess what the Software Engineers at Cakewalk have managed to get their DAW software to work perfectly well with it going right up through an entire range of different price point audio solutions....no mean achievement.

The good news for the OP is that despite some of the elitist clap-trap that gets regularly spouted here is that Sonar works perfectly well with correctly implemented HD audio, although for sure you ain't gonna be able to track much through yer sound cards mic or line inputs apart from plenty of hiss but for midi arranging and mixing previously tracked Audio, or in other words doing everything apart from audio tracking it's gonna be just swell.

Here's how to get the best from that set up....using Vista uninstall any third party Windows driver i.e. the Conexant or Realtek whatever and let Windows install the generic Microsoft HD Audio one if you can (some hardware is wired up or not implemented 100% as per spec in those cases you'll HAVE to use the proprietary manufacturers one. XP users will have to use the manufacturers driver as XP is too old to have HD Audio as standard).

Google Asio4all d/l and install (version 2.9 is the current one) then you are done.

Fire up Sonar in the Options/Audio/Advanced tab set driver mode to Asio. Click OK then shut down and restart Sonar

Go to Options/Audio again this time in the drivers tab turn off all the output drivers except the first one. Go to the General tab click on make sure the input playback master and output playback master are set to Asio4all, check 64 bit double precision.

Set the sample rate to what you want 44,100k is what I'm set at.

Click the ASIO Panel button to bring the A4ALL interface and try this setup to get you going (you can tweak later).

Hit the spanner icon on the panel to bring up the advanced options.

Latency Compensation 32 Samples both in and out.

Check the Hardware Buffer (so there is a tick on it)
Set Buffer offset to 2ms
Uncheck the other 2 boxes they are for AC/97 cards
Slide the ASIO Buffer Size to 352 to start with this will give you a hefty 8.0 ms latency but reliable use for mixing, which you can then bring down as low as you dare if needed for midi tracking.

Go back to Sonar's Audio Options and click OK to finalise this set-up.

Restart yer Sonar and strut yer stuff.

btw I couldn't be bothered to transfer my last effort off the lappy so I printed it using this exact same set-up and I ain't had one complaint about the quality, check it the top track on my Sounclick page from me link below...and tell me the difference between this and one rendered on a $1000 card and I'll promise to go out and get me one.

Sure this is a 128kbps mp3 but if you really want to check out the 24 bit wav of it just......nah you'd have to be sad to want do that...