Cubase and audio monitoring

[hummingbird]

Okay I finally got my Cubase (yeah!!!), got it installed, figured out how to set up access to my East West & Spectrosonics plug-ins. Have played with midi, done a little recording, gone through 8 chapters of the DVD tutorial. I've recorded several tracks and everything records perfectly in time (no latency that I can hear) with the other tracks.

Unfortunately, the one issue that I can't seem to resolve is audio playback while recording. So, I have the music playing through the headphones as I record vocals, but if I enable the audio on the vocal track, the time lag is very noticeable and distracting. As far as I can tell from reading the help, manual, etc.... this latency is a result of my ASIO card? But I had this computer custom-built according to specs everyone helped me with. I thought this issue was a result of my not understanding everything about latency, and having an older (and download version) of Tracktion2. This is a little disappointing as I felt that having the vocal mixed in with the audio in the headphones (like any recording studio I've been to) would assist me to record more effectively.

dunno if there is a software answer to this?

I have, I believe, an ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Driver, current output latency shows as 50.408 ms

thanks

[jh]

Hi,

Open the device setup ("devices" -->"Device Setup").
Select the "VST Audio System" and click on the "Asio Driver".
Select the "ASIO "your soundcard"" driver.

If that doesn´t help, go to the control panel
and decrease the buffer. (Right below the
"VST Audio System")

HTH

- JH

[tinozigzag]

JH advice is the right one Vikky, also check that you are on the right chanel!
TINO

[Casey H]

When you monitor are the headphones plugged in to your audio interface or your PC?

With Cubase LE, this is what works best for me. When recording, I select my audio interface driver (Tascam UL144) and monitor through headphones connected to the audio interface. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be possible, but I've never been able to select my soundcard driver during recording and be able to monitor. To mix on the PC, I switch the driver back to my soundcard's ASIO driver.

In your Cubase menus, as mentioned above in Device Setup, you can choose the driver. In LE, there is also a button Control Panel, which allows you to change settings on your audio interface. There are options for different latency speeds and I think buffer sizes. You can try raising the latency one notch at a time (e.g. from high to normal to low, etc) and see if you get improvement without causing pops. As suggested above, adjust the buffer sizes. I couldn't remember if you wanted them big or small, but the above post indicates they should be smaller.

The above is based on my experience with Cubase LE and a slightly foggy memory... It might be slightly different in your more advanced Cubase, but the concepts are the same.

HTH
Casey

[Len911]

I don't know if this will help, but I monitor my vocals before they go into cubase. I don't have the latency issue and everything is lined up on playback. I have cubase 5, an m-audio 2496 soundcard connected to an external RME ADI-2 a/d,d/a converter that has a headphone jack. I have also monitored on an Oram mixer that has headphone jack, but these are all before I go into cubase. I am not sure what your signal chain is before going into cubase.
For some reason it seems if the sound only has to travel one way,eg. vocals going in, recorded tracks coming out, there is no noticeable latency, but when the vocals have to go in then come back out, the latency is very noticeable, or if for some reason you were to return your recorded signal from cubase back into cubase.
If you are recording your vocals into the soundcard, I would think there should be a software mixer in the soundcard that might offer you a way to monitor your vocals before actually getting to cubase.

[hummingbird]

THANKS everyone for those ideas.

- there is no latency when I play my midi keyboard, the notes sound and show exactly on time (I have a USB interface on my midi keyboard)
- there is only latency when I try to monitor what's coming in on the mic, which is plugged into my preamp, an M-Audio Fasttrack.

I am unable to change either the latency or the buffer size in Cubase (there doesn't seem to be anywhere than I can change the latency), and when I tried to change the buffer size, Cubase crashed.

-I tried plugging the headphones into the M-Audio FastTrack. There's less latency then, when I speak or sing. However, I can't hear the music that's playing on the computer. I made sure that the Fasttrack was also on the output menu but that didn't seem to help. If I could get the music to come back out of the fasttrack that would resolve the issue. Well, I tried plugging my speakers into the Fastrack and my headphones into the soundbox - then I could hear the music & hear my voice but there was still latency.

I wondered what would happen if I plugged my headphones into the computer. Same issue with latency.

Casey suggested updating the driver for my M-Audio fasttrack, and also making sure I have the latest Cubase updates as well. I shall do that today.

My suspicion is that it's a hardware issue and I need a better soundcard. But I will try these other things.

Appreciate the help!

[hummingbird]

- downloaded the update for the fasttrack update. Went to install it. Got an error message from Windows -- "the software you are installing has not passed Windows Logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP. Continuing your installing of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system either immediately or in the future. Microsoft strongly recommends that you stop this installation now and contact the software vendor for software that has passed Windows Logo testing." I stopped the installation.

[mazz]

Vikki,

You should be able to get the audio from the computer to play back via the fast track and you should be able to listen to the microphone input to the fast track directly, which would eliminate the latency. The reason you're getting latency is that the microphone signal is going to the computer and then back out to your headphones. That "round trip" has a certain amount of inherent delay due to those pesky laws of physics!! No audio driver will ever be able to circumvent the speed of light, which is really what you're up against here. It takes a finite amount of time for the data to get in and back out again.

If you are able to listen to your microphone input directly along with the tracks you're singing to coming from the computer, the software will take care of the delay automatically and when you play back, everything will be in sync. I'm sure the M-Audio driver will allow you to listen to the "live" input, you just have to get the routing figured out between Cubase and the M-Audio driver. Sometimes it takes a little "dancing" to get all this stuff set up properly in the beginning.

As far as that silly warning: I don't think that you want to wait for M-Audio to get approval from Microsoft before you can install your software. In fact, most installer instructions will tell you to click through this warning and install anyway. This is just Microsoft letting you know that this vendor didn't feel like going through their red tape to get "blessed" by big brother Redmond. I've bypassed this warning many times without incident. It's up to you, but I treat those as benign and move on with my life.

HTH,

Mazz

[mojobone]

Mazz is correct; MS logo testing is essentially meaningless, because 95% of software companies bypass it to save time and (your) money. You need to set up your hardware and software for zero-latency monitoring-this means you monitor your input signals before they're sent to the A/D converter while listening to post D/A playback from Cubase. M-audio FastTrack may not support this; check your documentation. Latency settings are usually expressed in samples (# of samples) or milliseconds. (#ms) It's likely that Cubase crashed when you changed settings because the audio engine settings no longer agreed with those of the project. you should be able to change the latency without changing the sample rate and bit depth. Not sure where this page is in your Cubase menus, I haven't used any flavor of Cubase in several years. On my hardware, I can choose to monitor the hardware inputs, the software's outputs or both. The latency settings can usually be found on your hardware (interface) control panel. HTH.

[lindpop]

As others have said. Install the latest software and then change to the soundcards asio driver as JH explained. Cubase chooses the asio dircetx driver when installing. Don't know why.