# Latency



## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

I hear people talk about this all the time and I don't get it.

When I record anything what I am hearing in my headphones is the sound after whatever it is I'm recording, let's say vocals, goes through the DAW. I am hearing 100% wet, 0% direct monitoring.

I am not hearing any kind of delay and have no problem singing in time.

Do other people have a problem doing this?


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## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

I wondered this my self.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

Same here. Never encountered the problem.


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## slag banal (May 4, 2020)

You are lucky your system’s latency is so low that you don’t notice it. Try JamKazam if you want to hear latency problems. I hear a slight latency when running 100% playback monitoring while recording using an iRig into GarageBand on an iPad, but I can plow through. In JamKazam the round trips are a lot longer so that sometimes the delay between the drummer and others can be a quarter beat. imagine singing with the whole band behind by a quarter beat. You slow down, but then they slow down because to them you are now slower. It is often impossible to continue, and spirals down into chaos when this occurs. (Actually this reminds me of one of those brain-twisting stories about space-time dilation in Einstein’s Relativity theory.)


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

slag banal said:


> You are lucky your system’s latency is so low that you don’t notice it. Try JamKazam if you want to hear latency problems. I hear a slight latency when running 100% playback monitoring while recording using an iRig into GarageBand on an iPad, but I can plow through. In JamKazam the round trips are a lot longer so that sometimes the delay between the drummer and others can be a quarter beat. imagine singing with the whole band behind by a quarter beat. You slow down, but then they slow down because to them you are now slower. It is often impossible to continue, and spirals down into chaos when this occurs. (Actually this reminds me of one of those brain-twisting stories about space-time dilation in Einstein’s Relativity theory.)


Up until recently my setup was a decade old dusty PC I paid $600 for new running Reaper and a M-Audio Fast Track Pro I paid $80 for used.

It doesn't really get anymore unlucky than that.


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## Wardo (Feb 5, 2010)

I don't notice any delay. 

Using Reaper on a windows 7 desktop that's more than 10 years old and also using Reaper on a 10 year old laptop that was upgraded to 10.

I tried a few different DAWs before settling on Reaper and none of them had delays either.


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## slag banal (May 4, 2020)

The troll in me wants to disparage the acuity of your listening. But frankly, i always play drunk. So, I have never had big problems recording, which I noticed. I knocked a Neumann over once...but that’s a different issue. Sometimes after a dozen tracks on GB or PT you can sense a sponginess in the timing of the final result. jK is a different story.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

slag banal said:


> The troll in me wants to disparage the acuity of your listening. But frankly, i always play drunk. So, I have never had big problems recording, which I noticed. I knocked a Neumann over once...but that’s a different issue. Sometimes after a dozen tracks on GB or PT you can sense a sponginess in the timing of the final result. jK is a different story.


When I mix I use a reverb plugin on vocals that definitely introduces latency. Like a 100% wet delay. I have turn that off when tracking.


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## dgreen (Sep 3, 2016)

Depending on your DAW system, always lower your block size to 128 when recording, then latency is completely eliminated. Then when mixing bump the sample rate back up to 512 block size for the best audio / mixing. There are other block sizes but this would typically be the most common.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

Is this what you're talking about?


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## Kerry Brown (Mar 31, 2014)

When I first got a Scarlett interface it had huge latency problems. It was unusable. It was my fault. I hadn’t installed the Focusrite USB driver and was using the ASIO driver.


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## DavidP (Mar 7, 2006)

I gave up on JamKazam a year ago, the drummer may as well have been in another universe away! That's my working definition of latency. I know they've improved it since then but I have not tried it since...


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## dgreen (Sep 3, 2016)

Guncho said:


> Is this what you're talking about?


Yes, I am referring to Block Size, not sample rates


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## Hammerhands (Dec 19, 2016)

20ms will mess with me. I had a Pocket Pod for a couple of weeks that was impossible.

Vocals, I don’t think that would be a problem.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

If I remember correctly, when I first starting using Cakewalk many years ago, I set the latency and have never had to change it even with the upgrades so I don't have a latency problem to this day. Even when BandLab bought Cakewalk and I switched to Cakewalk by BandLab, I have never had to change the latency I entered way back when so I like many of you don't have a latency problem to this day.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Latency was awful with Audacity, non-existent with GarageBand. No interface, just the Blue Yeti plugged into a USB port. It’s awesome.


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## tonewoody (Mar 29, 2017)

If you headphone monitor your input on your mixer and send the track to the recording device you just hear the input on the mixer. 
If you hear any latency, you have bigger problems. See your doctor.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

tonewoody said:


> If you headphone monitor your input on your mixer and send the track to the recording device you just hear the input on the mixer.
> If you hear any latency, you have bigger problems. See your doctor.


Yeah I don't think I do that at all. If I put a delay plugin on the vocal track and record vocals, I can hear the delay. What I am hearing while singing, is the sound after my vocal has travelled through the DAW, not before it. I don't know how anyone would record vocals with a 100% dry mic to headphone sound.


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## tonewoody (Mar 29, 2017)

Guncho said:


> Yeah I don't think I do that at all. If I put a delay plugin on the vocal track and record vocals, I can hear the delay. What I am hearing while singing, is the sound after my vocal has travelled through the DAW, not before it. I don't know how anyone would record vocals with a 100% dry mic to headphone sound.


Re: Latency on delay: 
Q: how do you hear 6ms latency on a delay return?
A: You can't.


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## mawmow (Nov 14, 2017)

It used to be an issue when I used to record on my PC with web cam andMovie Maker.
There used to be a software (was it Audacity?) to correct that.
A friend of mine used to record on camera and PC, then mounting the sound track on the movie.
I do not have that problem on my ipad.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

tonewoody said:


> Re: Latency on delay:
> Q: how do you hear 6ms latency on a delay return?
> A: You can't.


I'm just using delay as an example. My point is I'm hearing my microphone through the DAW not before it.


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## tonewoody (Mar 29, 2017)

Guncho said:


> I'm just using delay as an example. My point is I'm hearing my microphone through the DAW not before it.


So, you don't have a problem....


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

tonewoody said:


> So, you don't have a problem....


No I do not and don't understand how anyone does considering how crappy my setup was.


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## tonewoody (Mar 29, 2017)

Guncho said:


> No I do not and don't understand how anyone does considering how crappy my setup was.


Try recording with 16 -32 tracks running on playback. Try recording 16 tracks at the same time.


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## Guncho (Jun 16, 2015)

tonewoody said:


> Try recording with 16 -32 tracks running on playback. Try recording 16 tracks at the same time.


Yeah I guess but I've definitely recorded backup vocals with 16 tracks running with no problems.


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## tonewoody (Mar 29, 2017)

Ok, add a few plugins on all the tracks....
***
Really, there is a point where the cpu just can't deliver and you need to buffer, which adds latency. This was more of an issue about 15 years ago.

These days, most comps have the horsepower. If your interface has decent drivers and the comp doesn't have unrelated stuff goofing around in the background, just be happy and record.
Seriously, if shit works, don't overthink it.


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## blueshores_guy (Apr 8, 2007)

I think I heard that a treatment for severe, recurring latency may be those little blue pills.


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## Grab n Go (May 1, 2013)

A/D to D/A conversions will always have latency. These days it's probably negligible. I think most people won't notice anything unless it's 10ms or greater. Some musicians with really good time might notice less than 10ms.

In the bad old days, I found recording 16 tracks off the floor on a computer was a trade-off between latency and pops & clicks. Especially if the singer wants reverb. I used to have a budget Tascam console with old rack-mounted reverb units just for headphone mixes (and keeping the singer happy).


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## Eric Reesor (Jan 26, 2020)

Mooh said:


> Latency was awful with Audacity, non-existent with GarageBand. No interface, just the Blue Yeti plugged into a USB port. It’s awesome.


Try a Linux usb stick daw that runs from ram not a harddrive install. AV Linux MX Edition A real time enabled compilation of Audacity works fine. As does Ardour a full DAW. Works fine using usb a/d devices like my Zoom H5. Limited to 24/48 but no latency issues with overdubbing. For higher settings like 24/96 usb audio is not going to work well for multi track over dubbing and monitoring. For that it is far better to use a system bus card than a USB audio interface no matter which operating system you are on. Good old fire wire was the standard for that kind of work until it was brushed aside.

If you have a pc or good laptop with at least 6 gig of ram then you can run a thumbdrive daw directly from a ram load and not even touch Windows on a pc or laptop. Winders has gotten better over the years and reaper does well at achieving good latency characteristics, but for true plug and play audio nothing comes close to what you can do with Linux without even installing it to your computer. You can even record to a harddrive in ntfs format with windows on it if you like and not even boot into windows once you know how to set things up so that the system does not need to pole the usb stick linux or use the windows oft times flaky OS or even flakier USB audio drivers or systems at all. ASIO usb drivers can be great on Windows, then at other times they suck, Now there are some native USB audio driver included in Windows Ten, but they only in their infancy. Both Mac and Linux have had USB version 2 audio drivers included in their operating systems for years. This is the USB version 2 system of audio drivers not the designation of standard USB2 which is the connection speed ratings of the connection not the audio specification driver standards. 

I started out with Cakewalk back in about 1997 on windows 95 and quickly learned that my wallet was in terrible trouble using Windows as a DAW. I have not used Windows for audio work for more than 20 years and my wallet thanks me for that! I spent over 2000 dollars getting a windows 95 pc with 128 meg of ram and a pro level sound card and found that it sucked and crashed like a flying turd all the time even mixing 16 bit audio at 44100 and could not overdub even a single track to a stereo mix without throwing latency into the mix in my headphones. 

In the beginning I spent hours trying to follow instructions on how to hack the registry of windows to give the audio priority and make asio work correctly only to have the system hosed by either an update or worse another program that screwed over the operating system and demanded cpu cycles like the largely useless windows antivirus crapware. Finally I just trashed the whole mess and went to external recording and gave up using an operating system designed for word processing and doing spread sheets as a music production platform.

A least with Linux after you learn to use it things get easy and much less troublesome even though learning to setup linux is a bit of a challenge, that was nothing compared to reinstalling and reconfiguring windows crazy settings for audio ever year or two and worrying if my hardware was going to be supported much longer. So having to deal with winders nightmares trying to work became my wife's headache even though I built the pcs and configured it for her because her worked often came home with her. So every once and a while even though she is retired I still get a tech call from her when something crashes her winders. LOL

I do hope that Windows ten finally becomes decent at audio work without having to purchase expensive subscription software from pro tools and the like, but I doubt it. Hell has not quite frozen over quite yet in Redmond when it comes to messing up musicians and even some of the recording studios that are suckers for punishment and insist on playing the Microsoft operating systems musical chairs software games.

Mac is on board now with the same game it seems, their shtick is changing connectors and obsoleting hardware devices almost as bad as a PC with Windows. Used high end firewire device prices certainly dropped big time as the studios were forced to dump or change out some key high speed high bit rate rack based recording gear that audio data linked with firewire.

I will stick to only recording on much more reliable and now even better configured portable devices, because the headaches of constantly doing tech support on audio devices on the PC is not helping me play the guitar at all and I have learned my lesson about why not to spend money on rental software like Windows and pc software audio interfaces.


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## KapnKrunch (Jul 13, 2016)

Here's the most useless information so far. 

Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don't. 

Reaper & dirt-cheap Windows.


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