Latency Issues

WaveLab
1

Hi

I have an old pc, Dell, 2400, Xp, Pentium 4, 2gb of ram, with Cubase 5 (32 bit) on it.
I recently bought a samson c03u condensor mic. Its a usb mic.
When i plug it into the usb slot and into cubase, i sing into the mic, (i’ve headphones on) i hear my singing 1 second behind. I believe this is caused by latency on the computer.

Anyway, i am thinking of upgrading my pc to a dell pc. i7, 4gb of ram, windows 7 (64 bit). Cubase 5.
Will this latency issue still exist on the new set up? or do i need to buy something else for monitoring my vocal?

Regards
Conor

2

It’s probably because of the drivers you have selected. USB mics are not recommended because they require their own drivers and Cubase can’t handle multiple drivers at once.

Try downloading ASIO4all and select that as your driver in Cubase, see if that helps. I don’t think it’s a problem with your pc. Do you have an audio interface or are you using onboard sound?

3

ok, thanks for that advice.

I have an emu 0404 card i think. Jack ins and outs. But i am not using it. I am using the onboard sound card, and running the mini jack cable to the small speaker i have.

Which do you recommend i use?

(I’ll download that ASIO 4 all driver when i get home, and try it then. [in work at the moment])

Conor

4

Is there anything i can do about “latency”?

I know very little about it.

For example, buy a dedicated usb card for the pc, that only runs the mic on it?
Is there a setting somewhere which will make the mic run better (for monitoring).

5

ok, i am reading that cubase can only deal with one driver at a time. And Asio4All allows more than one asio driver and combines it, giving less latency.
Thanks

6

Yep, use ASIO4all to combine all the drivers in one. You can also change your latency in the driver, the lower the better, but you’ll find that your soundcard can’t handle the lowest latencies. The EMU would most likely perform better in that respect.

7

Tried the Asio4All.

2 points.

  1. My Kawai piano which has a usb interface, i noticed on it previously, i’d play the piano in Halion and there would be a delay. After tinkering with Asio4All i was able to get rid of this latency issue.

  2. When i plug in the Samson Usb mic, i select Asio4All in cubase. I am able to route the Mic as an input device, but the sound card i’m using for output can’t be selected. Its an all or nothing scenario. In other words, you can use the mic, but you can’t route the output signals to the SoundMax card built into my old dell 2400 dimension desktop.

Am, i doing it right?

8

I’m starting to think i should have got the Samson C03
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samson-Technologies-SAM-CO3-C03/dp/B0002D0KBO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319800271&sr=8-1)

(not the usb one) and routed it into a pci/usb/firewire sound card with a monitoring headphone socket.

Its hard to record with a usb mic with the latency issues. It makes putting down songs on cubase difficult. You need to monitor yourself when singing.

9

Yep, it’s why usb mics are not recommended.
Did you go into the asio4all control panel to enable the usb mic and your soundcard outputs? You should be able to use both simultaneously with asio4all.

10

Tried that didn’t work. I’ll have a look later when i get home.

My machine is pretty old, 8 years ago. Pentium 4, 2gb ram xp machine.
I wonder if an i7, 4gb ram, windows 7 machine would cope with latency better?