Sound Latency - Guitar Monitoring

[dChAsE77]

I'm trying to record guitar while playing through my computer speakers.
I have Windows 7 Pro, and the windows forums show no answers. It's really quite bull how MS is treating the problem. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...b-f0cdc78a702d

Basically, guitars are precise instruments when it comes to music and milliseconds count.

When I play a note on my guitar, several beats go by before the sound is either recorded OR brought through my speakers. Does anyone on here know how to correct this?

[AruisDante]

Unfortunately this is just a fact of life with the way sound is handled in windows. If you think about the audio stack it makes sense: The sound has to be sampled on the input, then run back to the sound card and converted back into analog before its sent to the speaker. This will ALWAYS take time. It's one of the main reasons why that game that was supposed to teach you how to play the guitar/let you use a real guitar to play it failed, because the audio lag was so atrocious. Some sound cards/drivers are better than others, but they're all going to have it to some degree.

Professional grade audio recording equipment generally has a dedicated loopback channel where the raw analog signal from the input is split off and run directly to the output stage.

[K31TH3R]

The solution is bypassing the Windows 7 audio stack and having hardware with software that allows you to do this. You're likely not going to be able to do it with onboard Realtek, as onboard sound requires the computers CPU for hardware mixing, and this will add latency with the way Windows 7 audio stack is designed. Either get a standalone audio processor, or use Windows XP.

What you're trying to do is done easily with a PCI or USB hardware audio processor and software like Asio4All or AC3 filter etc. Bit matched recording/bitstream in/kernel streaming with no delay is available and works great in Windows 7, I've been producing just fine with it for 2+ years.

[Stratman]

Try Audacity, it is a free program, and I have used it to record my guitar and drum machine through my amp. My amp has a headphone/line out jack, and also a USB out, but I always use the line out. Just plug it into the line in on your sound card or mobo, and then select it as your source in Audacity. It works fine, but just remember, don't turn the amp up loud when recording.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I figured it out pretty easily, and it is VERY easy to use, I have done up to four channels on a recording, 3 guitar tracks, and one drum track.

I attached a sample of an Audacity recording I made. let me know what you think..

( for some reason on my machine, if i play this clip through Windows Media player, I can not hear the lead guitar track, but when I play it through VLC media player, it is fine.. )

Ok, now it won't play all tracks on VLC either, very strange. But, you can still listen, and hear the quality....

[Dholby5150]

I use Asio with GuitarRig.

Works like a champ.

I also noticed when I went from onboard to a SB card the latency was much better.

[K31TH3R]

Originally Posted by Stratman

Try Audacity, it is a free program, and I have used it to record my guitar and drum machine through my amp. My amp has a headphone/line out jack, and also a USB out, but I always use the line out. Just plug it into the line in on your sound card or mobo, and then select it as your source in Audacity. It works fine, but just remember, don't turn the amp up loud when recording.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I figured it out pretty easily, and it is VERY easy to use, I have done up to four channels on a recording, 3 guitar tracks, and one drum track.

I attached a sample of an Audacity recording I made. let me know what you think..

( for some reason on my machine, if i play this clip through Windows Media player, I can not hear the lead guitar track, but when I play it through VLC media player, it is fine.. )

Ok, now it won't play all tracks on VLC either, very strange. But, you can still listen, and hear the quality....

Lol and now we're playing rock.

This was originally longer but I hit convert, then accidentally hit new, and clicked no on "save changes" ROFL.

Too bad, it was a fun little jam and sounded good. Oh well, the whole thing wasn't lost. Fun jammin with ya.

[dChAsE77]

are you using windows 7 you audacity guys?

[onewecallgod]

One problem you guys haven't really mentioned is the fact that Windows is not a real-time OS. As far as the user is concerned, process scheduling is nearly random, as almost any process can preempt the currently running one. Not only that, but once the process you care about actually gets CPU time, it's only guaranteed, if I recall correctly, a 15ms time slice before it can be preempted again.

A quick Google resulted with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio.

[Stratman]

Originally Posted by dChAsE77

are you using windows 7 you audacity guys?

I am, yes, Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

[Mind_Reader7]

When I used to use Guitar Rig (killer program), I used to use a Behringer USB Guitar Link, and use ASIO4ALL. No lag here.