Comments

Victorious wrote on 10/25/2001, 3:34 PM
record latency is a term that describes the delay of a sound being sent into your sound card and coming out of your speakers when recording...for example, a 100ms latency means that you will only hear the sound coming out of your speakers 100ms after it goes into your sound card...you want a low latency sound card (WDM) for realtime monitoring when recording and especially when you are playing software synths in realtime with an external midi keyboard...you want to hear the sound coming out of the speakers right when you hit a key...
rob49 wrote on 10/26/2001, 8:51 AM
Thanks for your response Victorious.
I understand what you're saying. I might go back to using my original sound card as I have recently upgraded to a P4 1.5Ghz processor on a motherboard with a soundcard on board (Avance AC'97) and that may account for the discrepancy I'm getting between bed track and newly recorded track. Any tips on how I adjust the record latency to accomodate this problem or is it a matter of suck it & see?
Rob
Victorious wrote on 10/26/2001, 1:51 PM
I'm not sure if the record latency has anything to with the recordings being out of sync...when you are monitoring during recording and there is latency, it shouldn't affect the actual recording, only what you are hearing in realtime...the recording SHOULD be right on...correct me if I'm wrong anyone...
As far as tweaking the record latency settings, go to Options>Preferences>Audio>Advanced>Record Latency...try playing with some of those settings...that's about as much as I can provide you for help...maybe a more experienced user on the forum can help some more...
pwppch wrote on 10/26/2001, 10:58 PM
It sounds like your sound card does not do a sync start between record and playback.

Most multimedia cards - SBLives, and mobo chip set types - don't start record and playback at the same time. First one starts and then the other. The standard Wave MME drivers doesn't define this. When Vegas starts audio record and playback it must start one before the other as there is no single "atomic" call to start both. What happens is that one is actually going before the other one is told to start.

Many "pro" audio cards compensate for this problem internally. Basically when prepared to play/record each devices is set up and then a series of 'start' calls are made to the hardware. What these drivers do is look at how many of its ports (inputs and outputs) have been set up to record and wait for the last of them to have the start call made. The driver then starts all ports that have been prepared at the exact same time.

This synchronous start is not part of the Wave MME driver standard, but a defacto solution that higher end audio cards have adopted in one form or another.

Vegas attempts to deal with cards that don't implement sync start by looking at the inputs and output positions and adding a offset for this form of latency. It only works to a degree and is completely dependent on the accuracy of the cards position reporting. Most Multimedia type cards are not very accurate in reporting their position. If the card uses WDM drivers, the accuracy could be even worse.

So, the only real solution is to determine exactly how far off the input is from the output and then use the advance page on the Audio prefs page to adjust the record latency manually. If the latency is greater than 20 ms though, you will have to manually slide the recording.

Peter