Jake,

I am a complete newbie..first time ever.
I am using Reaper on your recomendation.
Here is the issue.. I have my guitar plugged into the sound card
I can record a single track and the latency is ok for me.. could be a little better but is ok.
When I play that track and record another it sounds ok when I am playing. But during playback the tracks are out of sync. The new track is delayed. I can slide it over and be fine. Is this a setting that can be set to allow it to automatically line up.

John

We can probably sort this out...

Can you tell me what model of soundcard you are using?

Also, please open up your audio device preferences by clicking on the text in the upper right corner of the reaper window.



You will see this screen:



Let me know what it currently says in the fields:
"Audio System"
"Input device"
"Output device"


Then click on the "Audio System" box, this will display a dropdown list



Please let me know what options you have listed.

Then, if there is an option called "ASIO" please choose it.
The preference page will have more options at this point.
Please click on the "ASIO Driver" box to show the drop down list of devices, and tell me what you see.




Once I get some answers I can help you further...


==END RANT / information===
What I can say at the moment is that Reaper does a great job of managing latency from soundcards and plugins, but only if it gets the correct information from the card / plugin...

In order to get the lowest latency (the delay between the time you play a note and it gets to Reaper / your speakers / headphones) you have to get the most direct path possible.

Often your computer is set up to have windows be a middleman between the card and the destination, which introduces more latency.

If you can choose the soundcard directly within reaper you will have more direct communication between reaper and your card, keeping windows out of the picture entirely.

Examples of windows middleman situations are:
"WDM Kernel Streaming"
"DirectSound"
"Waveout"

If you have no other options, WDM is usually the fastest.
The best case is that you have a USB / Firewire / PCI (plugged into the motherboard itself) that has "ASIO" drivers.

ASIO is the absolute fastest audio driver protocol, and if you want to have the most satisfying computer recording experience I suggest that you buy a card that has this kind of driver if you dont have one already.

For plugging in Guitars and regular dynamic microphones, I suggest something like the toneport GX which is mentioned in another thread here @ the forums. It virtually eliminates any discernible latency, and comes with the best amp simulators available.

Another route, if you cant get your hands on an ASIO soundcard, is to use a "Hack" driver called "ASIO4All" which often can get really low latency operation out of a soundcard that does not have a proper ASIO driver.

OK... Getting ahead of myself here I suppose.
I look forward to your report.

We will definately get you better performance!!!

Best, Jake

I'm going to download and switch over to Reaper tonight. I was just looking at the Reaper site, I got referenced to this absolute starters/dummies guide to PC recording.
I think it's really good as a starting point:

http://www.guitarists.net/lessons/view.php?id=117

(sorry - I realize this doesn't directly relate to GoodGuyToo's latency issue, but I thought he might appreciate it).

Thanks for the help...Can't believe a member of Seb is helping me.
I promise not to take too much of your time.

I have a cheap crummy sound card... Realtek high def audio. I did install the ASIO4all and can select it.... I think i read online that there is no native ASIO driver for the card. I can diddle out some leads but have since found out that if I try to play some even simple rythyms the delay is killing my Mojo....

In the corner it says 44100Hz 32 bit 1/2ch 448spls ~11/11ms ASIO.
Is that good or bad.

Perhaps I need a new ASIO compatiable sound card???

My computer is an dual processor AMD, Windows XP (fat as hell I'm sure).

Really just trying to have a little fun recording some multi layered guitars stuff.

What do you think? I am leaning to needing a better sound card. Any cheap options...

Is that USB box thing a fix all or is a better sound card a better option?
I do not need portability.

Oh good...
You got ASIO4all... thats definately as good as you can get it with a card with no native ASIO driver.

The latency readings you are seeing in the upper right in Reaper are input/output latency... Combined thats obviously 20ms, which is as if you were standing 20 feet away from an amplifier and trying to play in time with a drummer you were standing right next to... definately a mojo killer!!!

If you are willing to get a new sound card and are wanting to play guitar alot, I stand by earlier reccomendation for anything in the Line6 Toneport range.
The GX is the smallest, and cheapest @ about $50, and as previously mentioned, it has fantastic amp simulators in it!

You can also plug a dynamic mic (like a shure sm58) into it. You cant plug a condenser microphone into it, because it doesnt have an "XLR" (3 prong) input, or "phantom power" which a condenser needs.

There are other models in the toneport series that have XLR / phantom power though.

dont know if when you are talking about rhythms you are suggesting guitar rhythms, or drums...

On the drum front though, I suggest this:
http://www.bluenoise.no/mydrumset.html
Its a decent free drumkit with a mixer built in.
You can put on a track in reaper as an insert and play it via a MIDI keyboard, or Reapers built in keyboard that you can play with the QWERTY keys on your computer.

This is how you enable any virtual instrument to play in Reaper:
1. Insert the instrument on the track
2. Enable record mode by clicking on the "R"
3. Enable input monitoring by clicking the speaker ion once (turns white)
4. click in the level meter and navigate to the MIDI input part, choose "virtual midi keyboard" / All channels
5. hit control+B to bring up the virtual midi keyboard.
6. right clicking on a note centers the octave on the keyboard, so you can play higher or lower registers.

Your description of the 11/11 ms was key in helping me understand.
I read that 10-11 was good but I didn't realize to add them.

I was tweakeing the buffer of the asio4all driver and I can get the numbers down to 5.8/5.8 with some cracking and 7/7 w/o craking...It was noticable more responsive. But I still hear the delay and building one track on the next is still problematic. I don't buy that 10-11 is unnoticable..
Opinions??

With the proper equipment how low could I expect these numbers to get?
I suppose delay really does matter...

More internent research has told me not to expect great things with the current sound card.

im getting 5.1/10ms on my Toneport GX, and having no problem playing drums on a midipad in realtime... no Mojo death.

Which makes me wonder if your soundcard is REALLY getting the tight latency that is reported to Reaper because the readings you report arent too bad...

Do you have a little (or big) mixer?
If so check out this post I made awhile back:
http://jakerock.freeforums.org/zero-lat ... r-t62.html

And this conversation we are having is reminding me to implore you and Mongo to choose a soundcard that has "Direct hardware monitoring"
It is the same concept that I describe in the post I just linked to, but you dont need a mixer to do it.

I'll write more about it tomorrow...

Best, Jake

"Direct Hardware Monitoring"

All computer recording setups have latency, that is the time it takes for the audio signal to enter the soundcard, move thru the system and software, and arrive at the outputs of the soundcard. This process on any modern computer / decent soundcard is usually mere milliseconds, but even such a small delay is a real dealbreaker in terms of the way you play and is simply not acceptable!!! All modern recording software that I know of will compensate for this delay by shifting the recorded audio ahead in time by the amount of delay in the system, keeping eveything in sync in a multitrack recording. But in only does this AFTER you hit stop, so it isnt helping us to hear what we are playing / singing at the time we are recording.... there is this annoying goddamn delay that makes it hard to play anything right.

If your computer is fast and set up well for audio performance, this may not be a problem until you start building up a large amount of tracks in your recording session and or using some plugins. In my experience it is ALWAYS a problem, and the way we get around this is by employing "Direct Hardware Monitoring"

The idea behind DIRECT MONITORING is this, since the delay is introduced by passing the sound thru the soundcard / software / cpu and back out again, for listening to the tracks that we are recording we are going to cut the computer out of the equation entirely. We are going to listen to the sound we are recording at the source, right on the hardware that the microphone / guitar / keyboard is plugged into.

Im going to discuss two scenarios,recording with a sound card with direct hardware monitoring built in, and one that does not.



Scenario 1, your sound card has direct hardware monitoring.

This usually means that there is a little slider or knob that acts as a balance control between two extremes:

1. Only hearing the sound of the mics and guitars currently plugged into the sound card.
2. Only hearing the sound of tracks that are playing back in the software.

Lets take the much loved but latency introducing computer out of the equasion and listen to what we are playing AS WE ARE PLAYING IT!!!

picture this:

You have your multitrack audio recording software fired up and on...

Track 1 is a stereo drum track or loop

Track 2 is the track that you are going to record some rocking bass line.

1. TURN DOWN the output of your soundcard / monitors

2. You DO NOT want to hear the bass as is passes through all of this stuff, so you TURN OFF "input monitoring" for Track 2 (what you play will still be recorded!)

3. Plug in the bass and get a decent recording level set

4. Find the knob or slider described above and set it for 100% AWAY from the side that says "playback" and 100% TOWARD the side that says "input".

5. Slowly turn up the headphones / speakers as you play the bass until its at a good listening level for you.

6. playback the drum track and hit an open string on the bass with one hand, while slowly turning the knob / slider toward "playback" until they have a good balance.

7. Now you can record the bass along with the drums and have no delay at all in what you are recording.

When you play your recorded track back, it will be perfectly in time, and play back along with the drums through the "playback" on the soundcard.

Now you can plug in a guitar, turn off record monitoring, and overdub that on top of the bass and drums with the same results.



The catch with this method is that you cannot hear any plugin effects on the track that you are recording while "Input Monitoring" is turned off in the software... No reverb, guitar amp simulators, etc.... Its totally dry. This is no problem when using real guitar amps, or if you dont mind singing without reverb.



Scenario 2 Is when you dont have an Direct Hardware Monitoring soundcard...

This is no problem, but we will need a small mixing board!!!

This is the same idea basically as before.

Plug the monitors / headphones into the mixer outputs

Plug the main stereo output from your soundcard into the mixer (usually channels 1+2)

Plug your microphone / guitar / bass / whatever into channel 3, and plug the output (direct output is best) of this channel on the mixer into one channel of the soundcard.

This way... Channel 3 on the mixer goes into the soundcard on the computer, you create your bass track in the software, tell it to take its input from the channel on the sound card, and again turn off direct monitoring on the track in the software so that its not playing back...

Again, you are hearing the sound of what you are recording DIRECTly from the hardware (mixer) and therefore no delay!!!

Jake, totally digging this site and all your help...Like I said I would never have thought to try all this without your site. Thanks.

On Reaper do you normally pick the Record: input option...
They have record output latency compensated.
and the record output normal.
not sure what these are and the diff but guessing they add latency...

For me and my immediate sucky sound card problem I have been able to split my signal at a chorus pedal and hear my single through my amp. This helps alot... It still isn't lining up after hitting stop so I agree that reaper is likely not getting proper latency values reported to it...or there is a setting I am not sure how to use... I tried unchecking the auto detect latency box and typing in the numbers reported in the corner and even different longer latency numbers. Just can't seem to match it all up.
I am now convinced the sound card is the issue.

So I plan to tool with around with Reaper and all the many options...until I research a decent sound card...

I'll report back after I get a better hardware situation...

One thing that you can do to "deal with it" until you manage to find a better soundcard is to manually tell reaper what the REAL input latency is(the stuff you are recording), as the soundcard definitely seems to reporting it incorrectly.

How we do that:
Do a "loopback test"


1. plug a cable in from one of the outputs on the soundcard to one of the inputs on the soundcard

2. Create 2 tracks and import a sample of some kind of short, sharp transient... like a stick click or a snare drum or something and place it on track one

3. Arm the second track to record and select input one and playback to check the input level (meters) on the track that you are recording on to.

4. Record the sample onto the new track.

5. Zoom in on the waveforms and take a look...
They are not lined up exactly. You are looking at the input latency of your system!
In Reaper, right click the timeline and set the ruler to samples.



Look for a distinct, tall peak in the first waveform (the track that you recorded to the 2nd track)




then zoom in tight and left click and drag in the timeline to measure the distance between the peak in track one, and the peak in track two.



You have just measured the input latency (in samples) with the time selection tool in Reaper. The exact amount of the selection is shown at the bottom right hand corner of the screen in the "Selection" section



The "offset" in this case is 16 samples.

Now that we know that, all we have to do is tell reaper that we want this compensated for:

Hit CONTROL+P to open reapers preferences page, click on "recording" under the "Audio" submenu and enter the number of samples you measured above as a NEGATIVE (-) number in the
"input manual offset" > "samples" input box.



hit OK to apply changes...

Now Reaper should be able to adjust the recording to be perfectly in sync with the other tracks!

This should continue to work perfectly unless you adjust the "buffer size" or other parameters on your soundcard, as those settings affect the latency of the card.

Hope this helps!

Best, Jake

Jake, totally digging this site and all your help...Like I said I would never have thought to try all this without your site. Thanks.

No problem! I really like doing this, so dont be shy!


On Reaper do you normally pick the Record: input option...
They have record output latency compensated.
and the record output normal.
not sure what these are and the diff but guessing they add latency...

"Record:input" is what you should use for almost every situation where you are recording audio (mics / guitars / etc) onto a track in reaper.
The "latency compensated" options dont really do wat you would think they do and have been useless to me so far... just forget about them when recording audio!




For me and my immediate sucky sound card problem I have been able to split my signal at a chorus pedal and hear my single through my amp. This helps alot...

Yeah!!! Thats pretty much what Direct Hardware monitoring does... good work! Make sure you set the "input monitor" for the track you are recording on to "off" then you wont hear the sound coming thru the system (delayed) as well as thru the amp!

ok I did the loop back.
The difference is .062 seconds or 6.2 milliseconds.
or it reports it as 2736 samples???
Why so high on the samples?? I thought samples were in the 0 to 64 like range.

When I input that number 2736 as a positive in the samples box it all lines up pretty good.

So it seems I have a good work around until I upgrade. Thanks!!!

Oh good!

Sorry, seems that I got the idea about inputting the samples measured as negative (-) backwards... Glad you figured that out!


That is weird about the samples....
44,100 per second = 44.1 per ms

You measured 6.2 ms

6.2 * 44.1 = 273.42 samples

hmm... did you have the "Use driver reported latency" box checked or unchecked?

uh oh.





-Jake

Duh... I see my math mistake....
.062 seconds = 62 milliseconds = 2734.2 samples....
I guess my sound card really does suck....if that is true.

Off to the store soon...
Thanks for all your help.
This is alot of fun.

Yeah... that is definitely weird, but might be explained a bit by whether or not reaper is using the latency reported by the card AND our new offset...



I think its fun too!
Hit me up here anytime, I love this stuff!
-Jake

Oh... Dont forget about the Reaper Forums and Irc Chat..

Forums:
http://forum.cockos.com/index.php

IRC Chat (uses java right from your browser...easy!)
http://www.mixxnet.net/java/?channel=reaper

People in both of these venues are really happy to help... great folks.

I went to 2 stores to buy the Toneport GX....both stores didn't have it despite having nearly the entire series of Line 6 pedals...Guitar Center said it was special order??? oh well. I guess I'll have to mail order.

No bother. I got a acoustic guitar pick up instead. It's fun too.

I had a hell of a time finding one here in NYC too...
I swear that the one I found was the last one in the city.
I waited 45 minutes for the clerk to go find it in the warehouse @ J&R music... EVERYONE was out of stock here.
Plenty of UX1 / UX2's though.

I wanted the little one cause I could put it in my backpack and take it on tour with me... Nothing wrong with the bigger ones, and not too much more expensive.

-Jake

Just got a Toneport UX1. 89.99 at Best Buy. My Best Buy now has guitars and such. So much fun. All my issues are solved. Reaper works great. The tones are fun. Seems that Line 6 is changing their product lines... The hardware options seem to be the same but the new stuff comes with Pod Farm and all are $50 more than before. I found an old one so not sure what Pod farm is and how it is different from gearbox...

Anyways, thanks for steering me to this product and Reaper... Very happy with both.


Have a great Thanksgiving.

FYI... if anybody is looking for the line 6 items... It appears that you can buy the older versions and still download Pod Farm for Free. I just got pod farm for free, So you get Gearbox and Pod Farm and can save the $50 they are charging for the newer packages.... I think they are phasing out the older boxes shipped with Gearbox in favor of the new Pod Farm. Both are similer. I havn't used them enough to know all the difference....Gearbox appears to still have more featues, but is less pretty.
Pod Farm is prettier and allows you to run 2 amps in parralel and appears to be the future of line 6, but you can't see as many options on screen at a time. For anybody that has gearbox.. go to the line 6 monkey upgrader and download pod farm for free.... I think. I was able too.

Quick ?.
Using Toneport with Reaper...
When playing back a previously laid down rhythm track while recording a solo... The previous track is only played in my left earphone...The new as recorded solo is in both. Is it supposed to be that way? Can I have it play back in both eyes... Ear phones are connected to the earphone jack of the device.