Ableton Forum

Hi Ableton Live users. I consider myself a proffesional music artist, i study music at music academy in Sarajevo. But recently i came to a BIG problem... Im using high-end PC with WINDOWS 7 ultimate on it...Everything was fine till i started recording vocals, it had HUGE amount of latency from my michrophone.I even went on windows forums to check and guess what, there are thousand people with same problem, and they have no problems with their hardware every driver updated etc... So im asking you, is it really true that reverting back to XP will fix my problems, or should i go to Mac OS ?thanks

Windows 7 is fine. What is your setup ? (soundcard among others)

4gb ram quad core 3x, nvidia 1gb, Presonus FIRESTUDIO-MOBILE Firewire Audio Interface, 10-in/6-out, and mpk25 midi keyboard.

What are your buffer size settings? If you don't know how to determine this, please look at this post.

yup i forgot to write my buffer settings are on 256 , which is considered perdect for recording vocals.

W7 U probably has a lot more resources going on in the background. You have to optimize your OS by removing necessary programs running in the background. Turning off system restore would be your first step.

Try recording at 512, maybe that would solve the problem. 512 is fine, no noticeable latency at all. Plus when you record and play a lot of audio on a DAW, you'll need to raise it to that level anyway. So, better start with the setting.

kitekrazy wrote:W7 U probably has a lot more resources going on in the background. You have to optimize your OS by removing necessary programs running in the background. Turning off system restore would be your first step.

w7 uses a lot of resources when you dont need those resources, its mostly memory its using, once a program actually needs memory windows will free the memory for that program.
op were you previously using xp on the same system with no problems?

Stop using tons of delay inducing and oversampling plugins.

timothyallan wrote:Stop using tons of delay inducing and oversampling plugins.

Or flatten all the tracks before recording your vocals, so you can set the buffer to 128.
Not at all a fan of anything higher than 256 for recording, but I guess with vocals you don't have to hear the vocal track when recording it? So there you go mute the vocal track while you record it and Live will sync your vocals to the tracks. Flatten your tracks and turn off delay compensation if you want to hear the FX on the track while you record it, then set to the lowest buffer you can and you're golden.

BorisB wrote:yup i forgot to write my buffer settings are on 256 , which is considered perdect for recording vocals.

Are you using an ASIO? If not, you need to install something like this: http://www.asio4all.com/

Hope you find a solution soon. I know how frustrating this can be.

imo ..128 or lower is an acceptable latency for monitoring through the software..
also..keep in mind ..that each effect you add will add latency .. so try and use a minimum software fx while monitoring...

One thing to check is that you don't have any plug ins on the master channel. Using even something like a basic limiter can add latency to your set up.

Here's a stupid solution, but make sure your interface drivers are up to date. Turn off any anti-virus or anti-spyware stuff you have in the background.