M-audio USB mic questions (latency)

pjrey wrote on 10/18/2007, 12:08 PM
im just curious if i should use the latency with vegas 7? or the M-audio control panel latency.. or both.. so far, it seems best with both...
if i turn the USB MIC latency down all the way, 5 seconds into the recording it starts to buzz and crack... so i turn it up.. to 256, and then turn on vegas, to AUTO..
seems to be right one (when i hit record, monitor) it sounds realtime...
anyone have any luck with a USB MIC/latency issues...
do you use the m-audio asio drivers, both? i could uninstall the m-audio drivers (it will funtion without them, but comes with a control panel to help cut down on the latency issues.. so i can only test with just m-audio, or m-audio and vegas... and so far that does seem the best...

thanks
pj

Comments

Kennymusicman wrote on 10/18/2007, 1:51 PM
Generally you are going to want to use ASIO drivers - the latency they offer is much lower than say DirectX, or MME versions.
Also, by using the M-Audio control panel, you get access to features (hardware depending of course) that you will not get access to outside of the panel - for example, M-Audio Delta cards have the routing and zero-latency controls located within the panel.

A little playing to find your best setting is all that is required. As long as you are getting a low enough latency to work happily with what you are doing, you have succeeded. 11ms or so seems to be a good marker for musicians to head towards.

Turning the buffer down, means less audio required to fill the buffer, hence lower time taken = lower latency. Drawback is that you need to effectivelly fill and manage more buffers within a given time period = more cpu usage. Bigger buffer, = less cpu usage.

You may find a variety of values is best for you - lower settings for smaller projects, larger settings for bigger projects etc.

HTH

Ken
pjrey wrote on 10/18/2007, 2:58 PM
below is the info given to me next to the slider (bottom is 128, top is 4096)
my system is quite powerful, over double the specs for the recommended computer setup. so, why is it i cant go below 256, i cant use 128, it just crackles and hisses... i have USB2.0... my cpu is 2.6GHZ, mem 2GB, 100GB 720rmp harddrive...
running vista ultimate... what more do i need to be able to put it down to 128.. if my system cant handle it, what system can?

another question is.. is the preferences, audio devices, i chose my usb AISO m-audio mic... i get options to change buffer, and AGAIN latency.. hmmm...
isnt htat strange.. which one should i use? should i use both... (the other one being a control panel on my taskbar by the clock)

there is always a SLIGHT dely... (i can turn on monitoring on my mic, and that is ZERO latency, but i dont want to do that, i want to be able to monitor it via vegas.. and through the plugins etc...)

thanks for posting ken

pj

"Latency is a measure of the delay between the time you make a sound and the time the computer records (or monitors) that sound. Here, the unit for latency is the number of samples the driver collects before sending them to an application as input. Lower latency can make recording easier and more accurate, but not all computer systems can operate at the lowest latencies without introducing noise. If you experience unwanted input noise, increase latency"