Hi
Sorry for being clueless. First time using any home recording hardware and software.
I bought the Scarlett 2i2 and am trying to use it and Cubase Elements 13 to do some simple home recording…guitar, vocals, then will (hopefully) throw in additional tracks through plug ins later
Issue I’m having is it seems Direct Monitoring is the only way I can record vocals. I can’t get any latency reduction otherwise. When I use DM to record vocals, I can’t hear the backing guitar track in the headset, when I turn off DM, I can hear the guitars, but then I get a tonne of latency.
Do you use the Focusrite ASIO driver coming with the Scarlett 2i2 and have you already tried to reduce the buffer size in the driver settings (via Studio > Studio Setup > Audio System)? Usually, lower buffer sizes reduce latency but on the other hand might increase the chance to get clicks and pops during playback. I’d suggest to try recording without direct monitoring and small buffer sizes. Maybe this already mitigates the latency issue.
Yes, I use that driver
I played with the buffering in the control panel and there was no change at all (that I noticed) in the delay in the mic with DM off. I can’t record vocals without the DM due to the massive delay.
Correct. I put an acoustic guitar track in through the mic in the 2i2.
But I can’t hear it back in the headphones unless I turn off DM while recording vocals. But then the delay issue happens.
Using DM, I can only hear the mic. How can I get the backing track into my headphones or out of my PC speakers?
It really doesn’t make any sense that turning on direct monitor on the interface would mute a playback channel in Cubase.
So please confirm…you playback the previously recorded acoustic guitar from Cubase and can hear it but then you push this button on your interface to activate direct monitor and you no longer hear the acoustic?
Yup. I press play and it plays back through the 2i2 headphone jack, then if I try to use the mic at the same time, it’s super laggy. If I press the button for direct monitor, the lag is gone on vocals, but the guitar is gone. The only way I can hear both at the same time with no lag is plugging the headphones into the output on the back of the 2i2. Not quite the same, but if it’s the only way…I’m stuck with it.
You need to turn off ALL monitoring in Cubase…if you get laggy anything it means you have monitoring on which you don’t want if you use direct monitor.
If you still get the issue after that please post a screencap of your project tcp (in play so meters show signal) (you can use snipping tool with a delay in windows)
Ok. Thanks. I’ll give it a shot. I’ll turn off the little speaker symbol button (that’s the monitoring I assume you mean), and try it all again. DM vox and then I expect to hear playback and vox in the headset.
I’ll check back in later.
I dunno if I have pics that help. Basically…turned off all monitoring on all tracks. Plugged headphones in front headphone jack or the back output of the 2i2…no difference. With the DM on, I can’t hear anything recorded, with DM off I hear it all and the live mic. With headphones plugged into the Output on the back I can hear the backing tracks while I record over top. Otherwise I use DM and hear nothing but vocals on live mic, or I turn DM off and I get delay on the live mic.
In the pic here I labelled the faders. And with DM on, you can see the levels of the recorded tracks playing back, but nothing comes through the headphones.
OK…I think I might know what this is. I assumed the 2i2 didn’t have this function but they added it in the 4th gen. Not sure, still doesn’t seem to completely explain everything but try this.
It’s not the same as standard loopbacks so I’m already beginning to doubt it’s the issue but make sure that’s not enabled.
Basically if you turn off direct monitor and still hear the mic which you say you do (and Cubase monitor is off which it looks like it is) then it must be being routed to speakers another way and I think this would do that. What it doesn’t explain is why the guitar mutes when you turn on direct monitor but anyway…it’s all I got atm.
