Gutted I am.... Latency. Ready to SMASH my laptop

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:11 pm

I don't know what to do.... I don't even know what to say.

I just got an Alesis i/O14 to replace M-Audio Fast track.
I cannot get better than 1024 samples and 55ms.
I also have to use the Alesis System Latency Compensation Setting on Low.
I have Turned off Antivirus.
I have Disabled wireless networking.
I have maxed out Ram
Upgraded internal Harddrive.
I am using Live 6LE, no plugs, just trying to record 1 guitar track with no effects.

Even the metronome sounds wobble, like it speeds up or slows down slightly.
Also, as soon as I arm a track, sounds like reverb or something gets added.

Dammit. I am actually beyond tantrum stage.

I have been given a a couple of suggestions.
1. Check if BIOS is up to date.
2. Check firmware is up to date for Firewire.

P4, 3.2Ghz, XP sp3, 2 Gb ram

Too much money, too much time, no results.

robbmasters · Post by **robbmasters** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:17 pm

There are a couple of Firewire related hotfixes that are probably worth looking into, e.g. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222

You could also try ASIO4ALL - that gives me better latency than the native drivers for my soundcard.

dcease · Post by **dcease** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:51 pm

your i/o14 features direct monitoring. this allows you to listen to your input(s) directly at the outputs. you are hearing the echo when you monitor thru live, because of the latency (the time it takes for that physical sound to go thru the interface, on to the software(live),and back to the interfaces output(s) ). if all you want to do is record an acoustic track, make sure the physical input (guitar) is routed to a physical output (headphones/monitors) via the alesis software. next, make sure input monitoring in live is OFF, and record away. if you want to record to something (beat, etc.) send the output of live to the same output your guitar is routed to on the i/o14.

imho, a lot of this can be chalked up to user inexperience/error. wrapping your head around new computer shit takes a minute, you've got to get comfortable with the capabilities of your hardware, you've gone from a couple of inputs, and a couple of outputs, (up) to 14 ins and outs. there SHOULD be headscratching and cursing, till you get the gist of it. i came from harddisc recorders, no latency, no cpu overload, i knew what my limitations were- (x) amount of inputs/outputs/tracks/sends/efx, and so on... i plugged in a mic, guitar, and keyboard, and wrote tunes. very productive, although quality/skill left something to be desired. and editing on a screen smaller than most cell phone screens was a pita. so i decided to try computer recordings. i spent a year, at least, learning as much as i could thru trial and error. then i spent a year or so reading and learning some more. lots of ideas, not so many tunes. still learning, and will remain that way, for ever. but after starting ~4 years ago with computers, i am comfortable with the ins and outs, so to speak... my first sound card took me days to figure out

as far as your buffer settings and such, you *should* be able to get them numbers a bit lower, do try the latest firewire drivers from alesis. try an uninstall, and reinstall everything. restart your computer when done... make sure you are using the alesis asio driver in lives prefs, not any others, that other crap doesn't work well. or the asio4all mentioned above. drivers are the bane of creative musicians...

jah4life · Post by **jah4life** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:51 pm

can't really help with much in terms of the latency, sorry mate. but i noticed you said when you arm a track you hear a "reverb" type sound. this may be a result of your monitor settings in ableton.

how are you recording your guitar? do you use a microphone or does it go direct in?

with a direct in, if you're not using any effects or processing on your pre-loop signal, you will probably want to use your hardware's direct output monitoring, which just feeds your signal straight from input to output without going through the computer.

With a mic or direct in, same goes for both: turn monitor setting on the input track for your guitar in ableton to AUTO, route it to your record track, and (most importantly) set the monitor of the record track to OFF.

If the recording tracks are set to AUTO then they will DOUBLE your guitar track when armed and introduce a slight delay (due to latency) and it will sound kinda like reverb. Hope that helps.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:09 pm

what's your sample rate?

edit - sorry, just got off a bike ride, little light headed, bad reading...

gjm wrote:Also, as soon as I arm a track, sounds like reverb or something gets added.

sounds like you're hearing through your sound card and Live at the same time. IOW a guitar hits the sound card from the outside world, the sound card sends that to the monitors with its 'direct monitoring' feature. the same signal goes into Live, gets mixed with the metronome and everything then goes to the sound card then out to the monitors.

shit like that. dunno why/how the metronome could be phasing/reverbing/comb filteinrg (all are signs of two identical signals on top of each other, slightly offset in time.)

you'll get there, just paying yer dues.

Laura_Live · Post by **Laura_Live** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:47 pm

If XP SP3 problems: http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3 ... 8&x=2&y=11

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:49 pm

What was your latency like before you got the Alesis?

And how are you checking your latency - when you say you can't get it below 1024/55ms, do you get clicks and pops below that or just nothing?

I'd definitely agree with the posters above - make absolutely sure you're not doing anything funky with the direct monitoring settings before looking into technical system faults. Also make sure you've got the latest drivers for the Alesis.

Brainstorm for more ways to isolate the problem - is it hardware or software? Is it a disk issue or maybe RAM? What's the power like in your workspace - if the Alesis takes a generic power cable try another one.

Have you seen this massive thread on the IO26/14?
Here is another fix which seems to help on a couple of issues - I found both of these by googling "Alesis System Latency Compensation".

These SOS articles might help:
Eradicating PC Audio Clicks & Pops
XP Tweaks For Music

General stuff:

Have you checked Device Manager to see if there are any hardware conflicts? Try disabling any devices you don't need, even start disabling any wierd stuff like printers/cameras etc one by one to see if you can isolate one that might be causing a conflict. Network & USB devices are a good start.

How much free disk space do you have? Anything below 2GB may not be good. Have you f*cked with your Virtual Memory settings? Maybe set 'em back to default. Get a demo copy of Ultimate Defrag and defrag your disk while you're taking a breather from all this shit.

Try Process Explorer. If there's anything wierd going on in the background it might highlight it. I find if you double click the CPU/Page File/Disk IO meter on the top right hand corner, & then maximise that, you'll quickly get an idea of whether something is hogging resources by hovering your mouse over spikes and observing what process is shown in the top left/right corner of the screen.

Get TweakUI and turn off all those visual effects like shadows under cursor - pretty much everything really. You can keep themes, especially if they help you work (I like Royale Noir).

Get Ccleaner and run the registry fixup tool.

What services are running (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services)? Running a local Apache/SQL server can eat up CPU. Process explorer will give you a rough idea of whether this is going on, but trial and error will narrow down offending services - maybe there's a freeware app out there that will break down what CPU cycles are being eaten up by services tho.

Write a batch file to instantly kill any running processes that you know aren't conducive to music, i.e.:

Code: Select all

taskkill /f /im GoogleUpdate.exe
taskkill /f /im applemobiledeviceservice.exe
taskkill /f /im firefox.exe
pause

You can also prevent processes/services from running on startup by clicking Start -> Run -> type 'msconfig' & press ok. Check the last two tabs for anything you know is dodgy like Realplayer etc, and don't touch anything that you're unsure about.

I know you probably know most/all of this already but my braindump might at least give you some ideas.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:42 pm

Thanks everyone (and leedsquietman) for all the tips. Your advice and encouragement is greatly appreciated. I have plenty to work on now. Thanks again.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:27 am

I hope you can get it working gjm, because I have an IO14 and as you know it's working OK on my setup, and that includes using a 6 pin to 4 pin FW cable as my PC laptop has mini FW port, which can sometimes affect it.

Also try downloading DPC Latency a system latency test which can sometimes help find bottlenecks.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

my computer is fine and does not need extra latency compensation according to this test, although if I load up a ton of plugins in Live 7, I find that it works better with low system latency compensation.

I can comfortably my Alesis IO14 run at 256 samples (15ms total latency) in Live and 128 (8ms total) in Cubase and Reason with this interface, on my Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop w/3.2 Ghz P4, 2 GB DDR and 60 GB 7200 internal (20 GB left) and 300 GB (135 GB left) 7200 rpm Maxtor external USB 2.0 drive. I have hyperthreading turned off. I have a Texas Instruments firewire chipset.

Good luck gjm. STuff like this is what drives people back to hardware solutions, but stick with it and I'm sure you'll find a remedy.

Punky921 · Post by **Punky921** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:33 am

There's gotta be something tragically wrong somewhere with your drivers or something, because I can get 114 samples and 6.5 ms latency with my Macbook onboard soundcard.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:33 am

I took a look at the monitoring set up earlier this evening. Thanks for all the tips. I did deal with the funny 'reverb' sound.

There are two options with slightly different results.

1. Mute the the input signal on the Alesis Direct Monitoring Panel, and leave Lives monitoring on 'Auto.' This gave a stereo sound through my speakers with some latency delay (but no 'reverb' sound). It still is delayed enough to be 'disorienting' while trying to play with the metronome, at 1024 samples.

2. Turn Lives monitoring to OFF and monitor through the i/O14. This gave a mono? sound through the right speaker only, but no latency delay. Easy to play with the metronome and record.

Still got to figure out why I am only getting sound through one speaker while monitoring through i/O14.

Still I am vary happy to knock this off. Thanks.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:52 am

have you tried panning in the alesis direct monitoring the guitar track to center. It does default to 100% left for input 1 and 100% right for input 2, but if you pan it to centre, it comes out of both speakers equally. Yes, set the input monitoring in Live to OFF. Also make sure you have mono and stereo inputs enable in Live's audio preferences.

If you are recording a guitar direct into one input on any interface it's going to be in mono. So on your input selection in Live, if you are using input 1 for the guitar, don't leave it set to the default 1/2 stereo, set it to input 1 (or 2 if you recording using input 2 etc).

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:10 pm

dcease wrote:imho, a lot of this can be chalked up to user inexperience/error...

leedsquietman wrote:have you tried panning in the alesis direct monitoring the guitar track to center.

...soooo simple [groan]....thanks.

meantown · Post by **meantown** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:19 pm

I've not had time to read through here. Make sure complex mode is off on the clips that can be a real power user.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:24 pm

gjm - my $0.02 on how I've changed my live recording lately to get around coordinating latency delays and Live's features. fuck Live, doin' it simple...

suppose I'm recording guitar...
- turn off the guitar track in Live (unhighlight its track #)
- make sure I can hear the guitar on the sound card's direct monitoring
- arm the track, set monitor to In
- get the scene going, hit record on a guitar clip, quantize set to 1 measure or more
- then I hit some staccato notes to lay down the count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4...
- relax and play...
- stop recording, unarm the track, turn it back on
- go into clip view
- make the loop window 1 or 2 measures
- find that 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4... set the '1' warp marker to that spot.
- done, you're aligned, now find the loops you like
- check the bottom of clip view, you can see the delay in milliseconds, take after take you'll see the same number pop up, that's your true latency, more accurate than what Live or your sound card can tell you.
- I guess you could use the track delay in two ways
-- use it to pull your recording back by the latency amount
-- use it to push the sounds that are programmed on time (midi drums for example)

I went back to 48kHz from 192kHz since my sets got larger, so latency was making recording painful.

my $0.02, I know you also record live instruments, all this can be a pain in the ass. dunno if I'm ready to drop $1k on an RME but it's tempting.