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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 mere milleseconds most of the time, but our ears are sensitive little beasts and even such a small delay can be disconcerting and the effect of a short delay like this can cause "comb filtering" which effects frequency perception in a bad way. Comb filtering in this situation does not affect the recorded sound, but affects how it sounds AS you are monitoring the recording, and may affect the way you perform in a negative way...
I wrote this in response to a fellow on the Reaper forums, and thought it might be of use here as well....
The best case scenario is that you can get your system / soundcard tweaked for very low latency, and you can just monitor thru the software... And most soundcards can get latency low enough that tracking instruments this way is really no problem...
When playing electric instruments we adjust our timing constantly based on the distance we are standing from the amp, or the size of the room, the distance from your bandmates etc... These are very short delays in the time it takes for you to play your guitar and for the sound of the amp to reach your ears, but add all the other spatial variables together and it becomes a somewhat complex equasion for your brain and hands to compensate for. But, our brains are pretty darn amazing and we do it all the time without even realizing it.
The latency produced by the computer recording system as a whole while recording is likely to be the same or less than you standing a few feet from your guitar amp, which we are totally used to compensating for.
Where this breaks down for me, and for the folks I record is when tracking vocals... Because you are right up against the mic, and are absoloutely NOT used to having any acoustic latency (delay) between your mouth and your ears (LOL) it is almost always disconcerting to have a delay present while singing...
Plus your voice will sound weird due to comb filtering, and you might sing differently than you normally would.
So, when I am tracking vox, I am lucky to have a hardware monitoring knob on my soundcard where you can choose to monitor the input directly on the soundcard = no latency.
So while recording I would be listening to the direct monitoring on the soundcard for the microphone, (not thru the computer) and the track you are recording to in Reaper would have all monitoring turned off, so that you can play back the previously recorded tracks without hearing the mic "twice."
BUT if your soundcard doesnt have direct monitoring, you can do this using any mixing board that has at least 3 inputs:
1. On the mixer: Plug the outputs of your sound card into channels 1&2
2. On the mixer: Plug the mic into channel 3, and plug the output of the channel send it to an input on the soundcard
3. In your software: arm the track in the software (turn input monitoring off) and select the input channel... (the channel on your soundcard that is plugged into the channel on your mixer.
4. Plug your headphones into the MIXER and listen to everything from there.
This way, even if there is latency in the system you dont hear it during tracking, and it is automatically compensated for in your software and eveything is lined up perfectly. (This handy thing is called "ADC" Automatic Delay Compensation. If your software does not have it (Pro Tools LE doesnt!)...I recommend that you switch to something that DOES have it. Al La:Reaper!)
The limitation of this direct hardware monitoring method is that you are NOT going to hear any FX / anything else that you have on the track you are recording until you playback...
Hope that makes sense...
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