Recording Delay in Headphone Mix

[Fries]

Hello,

 

First time this has happened to me.

 

I'm recording vocals today and all the tracks in my Logic session are outputting to a headphone bus, including the one record ready for vocals. When I speak into the microphone their is a significant delay in the headphones. I adjusted the I/O Buffer Size, and Recording Delay to no avail.

 

I read on another post to monitor my tracks output through my hardware interface and bypass Logics output. I don't want to do that, I mean I will if it is the ONLY way. It just kinda seems like a work around, and I want to permanently FIX this.

 

I should be able to set up a headphone mix, and monitor through it with zero latency while tracking, right? Is that asking to much of Logic? Other DAWs have this capability I'm sure, and I've done this before with Logic and had great success.

 

I just can't think of what could be set differently this time...

 

Any suggestions on what might be the issue? All comments are welcome and will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Fries

[David Nahmani]

I should be able to set up a headphone mix, and monitor through it with zero latency while tracking, right?

 

Wrong. Latency is inevitable when converting A/D, processing and converting to D/A.

 

If you truly want zero latency, you need an analog mixer. If you want near-zero latency, you can use certain audio interfaces that allow you to route the incoming signal back and mix it along the signal that comes from Logic, for monitoring. Usually that's done in digital so you still have a small latency due to A/D and D/A conversion.

 

Or if you want to use Logic to monitor, you can turn down latency by lowering the buffer size in Audio > Audio Hardware and Drivers and making sure you don't use any latency-inducing plug-ins like Adaptive Limiter.

[shivermetimbers]

Actually, I wish companies would stop putting Zero latency monitoring in the ad because it is misleading. It doesn't have anything to do with the recording and is nothing more than amplifying the signal input directly to the headphones.

 

If you didn't have this problem before then, as David recommended look at any latency induced plug-ins. The worse case would be recording while using final mix plug-ins. That's a definite No-No.

[Fries]

Thanks for your posts. I will think about an analog front end now...

 

As far as computing resources go is their anything that can assist with latency issues (e.g. more storage space, more RAM, etc.) ? Any personal latency triumphs you would like to share with the class?

 

thanx again,

 

Fries

[David Nahmani]

As far as computing resources go is their anything that can assist with latency issues (e.g. more storage space, more RAM, etc.) ? Any personal latency triumphs you would like to share with the class?

Faster CPU, better drivers, lower i/o buffer, PCI interface vs Firewire, higher sample rate all contribute to lower latency.

 

One of the lower latency you can get while using software monitoring is with Logic and the Apogee Symphony: 1.6ms. That's lower than the big Pro Tools rigs.

 

To give you an idea, if you're sitting 3 feet from your guitar amp, let's say your ears are actually 5 feet from the amp, that's 5ms latency between the time you play a note and the time you hear it.

 

Another one: if you use any hardware MIDI gear connected with a MIDI interface, each MIDI event takes about 1ms to be transmitted. That's 10ms between two notes of a 10 note chord. Imagine playing a continuous controller such as a volume pedal at the same time.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that latency isn't necessarily your enemy and musicians usually compensate for it, but it should just be low enough so you shouldn't hear it.

[triplets]

Are you using an Adaptive Limiter or a Liner Phase Eq? Those plugins add latency when recording, so you better bypass them.

[Fries]

No adaptive limiter or linear phase EQ.

 

I'm probably going to change my project's sample rate to a higher one and see if that solves this particular incident.

 

I recently switched from doing all my projects at 88.2 to 44.1. I think that might be why this is all of a sudden becoming an issue. I won't be able to try it for a couple of days most likely (work!*argh*) but when I do I'll repost and let you know if the sample rate change helped the situation.

 

Originally I went from 88.2 to 44.1 for simplicity (read as laziness) sake . I got tired of always converting sample rates.LOTS of stuff is already at 44.1 continually converting up to 88.2 seemed arduous. Plus, I read David's thread about most commercial projects being at 44.1. I thought if it works for them...

 

Anyway I'll repost more later.

 

All you guys are fabulous. Except Medar46...he sucks... BIG time.

 

-Fries

[nickweston]

yeah, check for any 3rd-party plugins also.

 

certain Logic plugins increase latency.

 

oh, and welcome back to 44.1! I made a couple of albums at 88.2 and wouldn't do it again, huge headache, bigger processor load, marginal if any increase in fidelity of final product.

 

just my opinion, I may be wrong....

 

 

NW