PC Audio recording set up questions for Newbie

[Halbert]

NI usually makes great stuff. Lots of times access to specific modes or features of a card and their associated driver is controlled by the DAW software itself. If you don't want to change that, you might look and see if NI includes their own control panel software, which let's you do the configuration separately from the DAW package.

As I said, I haven't givenup on it yet. I need to look to see about the control panel app, but I do really like my Sonar. I have been using Cakewalk for 15 years. But I will see if Cubase will behave better with it. I would be open to trying Pro Tools except I feel like it might take a long time to learn.

[beatbyrd]

To me, one of the biggest things keeping me away from PC audio recording is the seemingly endless hardware/software/OS/driver conflicts. I want to spend my time making and mixing music, not troubleshooting and searching the net for the latest updates and fixes. For $650 (and as low as $550), you can get a Tascam 2488 hard disk recorder; 24 tracks at 24 bit/96khz quality. You can use it to record tunes 'start to finish' - or - just capture the tracks and move them (via USB) over to your favorite DAW software for editing/mixing/mastering. No latency issues. No drivers to get in sync. It's self contained and can (carefully) travel to live gigs. This isn't meant to be a commercial for the 2488. It's just what I use and have experience with. Korg and others also make decent hard disk recorders. I'm just offering an alternative to spending time debugging PC issues when you could be playing. Tom

[johnhall]

As I said, I haven't givenup on it yet. I need to look to see about the control panel app, but I do really like my Sonar. I have been using Cakewalk for 15 years. But I will see if Cubase will behave better with it. I would be open to trying Pro Tools except I feel like it might take a long time to learn.

Ah, well, I guess I missed that you were using Sonar, which is always my weapon of choice!

Assuming version X1, go edit-preferfences-playback and recording. In driver mode (assuming Windos 7 64-bit) select WASAPI and Powr 3 on dither. Either retest or load Sonar again and I'll be surprised if you don't have latency down in the 2 ms range.

[Halbert]

Many thanks Mr. Hall! I will most definately give your advice a go at the soonest oportunity.

Now we just need to get Sepp squared away when he posts his settings...

[Kopfjaeger]

Due to a few computer issues, I uninstalled both Mixcraft and the M0Audio software and drivers. i shredded ASIO4all and restarted my computer to a point a week before I loaded everything. Once I was back to square one, negative, I reloaded Mixcraft 5 and I loaded just the M-Audio driver off the Avid website. M-Adio included Pro Tools which seemed like a weaker version of Mixcraft. I did not load that the second time around.

Mixcraft acknowledges the m-Audio AI unit. In the Mixcraft preferences I'm able to choose between Wave, ASIO, and WaveRT drivers. In waveRT, I can lower the latency to 14 milliseconds without any sound distortion. I can only do this if I have selected exclusive mode, which allows me to go under 20 milliseconds. I think this is going to work for me except that in this mode, it has disabled sound to any other of my applications. To regain sound to the other apps, i need to close them, restart them after I have un selected exclusive and set the default back to 20 milsec.

The real time sound through my computer speakers is still very low, way lower than normal volume. Not sure if a slightly better sound card or better speakers is going to solve that.

At 14 milisec, I can play easily Iron maiden bass lines with any noticeable delay. it no longer sounds like I'm in an echo chamber!

if I attempt to choose ASIO as the driver in preferences, it does not offer my sound card as a choice for playback monitoring.

Sepp

[tmossman]

You want to the sound to go from guitar -> interface -> computer -> DAW (Mixcraft in your case) -> computer -> interface -> soundcard. You want to to choose your Fast track for playback. Use the rca line outputs from the the fast track to your line in on your soundcard.