Latency question / troubleshooting

[Thummin]

Here's a weird situation. I'm running Win98, P4 1.7Mhz processor, over 500Mb of RAM, using Sonar XL, a Layla 24 audio setup, and a Roland XV-88 to input my MIDI stream. I'm also using a little Mackey mixer for mic recording -- i needed a mic preamp -- which is then run through the output line to a Layla input.

I get no latency on a straight audio-feed-and-record in Sonar. (i.e., I run audio from the keyboard through Layla into Sonar.)

I do get additive latency on MIDI where I am basically recording to Audio (i.e., I play the MIDI from Sonar into my keyboard, which then outputs it as audio through Layla 24 to the recording track). I call it additive latency because the new track starts in sync but slowly falls behind any other recorded audio tracks that WERE in sync when it was simply MIDI.

I also get what seems to be the same amount of latency on the mic feed. (i.e., if I sing along with an audio track, on playback the recorded voice will slowly fall behind the audio track that I sang along with).

Usually within half a verse to a whole verse, the track is a whole beat out of sync.

Any ideas of what I could try to get rid of this latency? And is there an easier way to record MIDI to audio?

-- david

[erichenryus]

Have you tried adjusting you latency in Sonar? There's a setting in options/audio that allows you to lower the latency.

Also, are you using the WDM drivers(is that an option on win98)? Only reason I ask is that I run Sonar on win2k with an Echo card and my latency can go all the way down to 1.3ms without a problem.

[Thummin]

Originally posted by erichenryus:
Have you tried adjusting you latency in Sonar? There's a setting in options/audio that allows you to lower the latency.

Good idea. I'll check them out and see what happens. Of course, now I'm having ANOTHER fun problem I'll mention briefly below...

Also, are you using the WDM drivers(is that an option on win98)? Only reason I ask is that I run Sonar on win2k with an Echo card and my latency can go all the way down to 1.3ms without a problem.

Yes, I noticed an option in the Audio seection involving two types of drivers (the WDM, I forget the other). I'll check it out again.

This is becoming an issue because I just installed Gigastudio a few days ago and got it to run Sonar, so that I could use Gigastudio samples via the Sonar MIDI input channel. Exciting...!

But now Sonar will not run any audio input by itself. (i.e., if I run it outside of Gigastudio.) It keeps telling me that some other program has claimed all the audio inputs (1-8) and asks about "disabling" or "use anyway" -- and even if I try to pick "use anyway," it won't let me. I've suddenly lost all power to record audio from my keyboard via Sonar.

Got any ideas? I examined the Settings areas both for Sonar and for Gigastudio (Giga's was particularly thin) and haven't yet figured out how to "unlock" the Layla 24 audio input channels.

Thanks for any advice. I appreciate any suggestions someone might have...

[erichenryus]

I can't remember where (maybe in the echo console) but you can set your echo driver to handle multiple clients. Not sure if this will work with win98 and I have never used Gigastudio before.

[Thummin]

Originally posted by erichenryus:
I can't remember where (maybe in the echo console) but you can set your echo driver to handle multiple clients. Not sure if this will work with win98 and I have never used Gigastudio before.

I'll check it out.

Gigastudio seems to be a pretty cool program -- the samples are nice -- but as many people have no doubt said, the documentation is pretty lousy. Probably some of the least thorough I've seen.

(A program that complicated needs to have more thorough documentation. To give them credit, Tascam has promised a real manual but so far it's up to users to play with things until they figure them out.)