Help Latency -Recording Saxophone with Backing Track (results in sounding consistently out of time)

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
January 26, 2023
3 replies
577 views

Hi, I play saxophone and want to use Audtion to record my saxophone playing with a backing track. I've been using Audition for a little while to do some audio editing and like some of the features (very green when it come to audio editing, stumbling around learning in the softwares I have available, I have a creative cloud subscritpion).

The biggest issue seems to arise when I import a backing track into a multi-session plug in my focusrite scarlett solo interface and my wireless cloudvocal clip on sax microphone. I came to realise that I sound consistenly out of time and with some simple test with a click track I realised that I'm roughly about 200ms behind the beat consistenly.

There doesn't seem to be a simple fix for this except moving the track everytime I finish recording, which is a pain in the butt. Mucking around with settings has caused issues with sound quality etc. My saxophone teacher in the UK from Mcgills sax school suggested that most daws have a simple fix for this. But everypost I read in these community or youtube makes it sound extremely complicated with a lot of technical jargen I don't understand and it seems to be more geared towards radio editing where perhaps the timing isn't as much of an issue?

So for the last 2 months I've stopped using Audition all together for recroding and used a simple free Audacity that has an extremely simple place that I can adjust the latency setting to -200 m/s and problem is fixed. So my question is, is there a simple setting like this in audition that doesn't cause all the issues. Really all I'm doing is recording some simple sax playing to a backing track and wanting to listen back to it in time? Nothing to fancy here not even an audio editing.

I have tried turning off smart monitoring but that does not fix the problem.

I like some of the features in audition that in able me to place marker and make loops easy and I'd much prefer to continue using it. So audio editing Latency advice for a in lamens terms (ie for a dumby) would be much appreciated.

How to

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Rag and Bone

Community Expert

Probably not what you're looking for, but if the latency is a known constant you could either clip the beginning of the sax track by 200ms or add 200ms of silence to the top of the backing track.

I'm guessing that's what Audacity is doing.

E

emmrecs

Legend

Which Audio driver type are you using in your Focusrite interface? Assuming there is one for your particular model you need to be using an ASIO driver. That is, realistically, the only method of avoiding the latency problem you have.

HTH

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

It's also worth checking the buffer size you have set. It may well be that if it gets too large, any automatic compensation that the driver can apply gets out of range. In this situation, you should aim for the lowest value you can have without it completely emptying - which will become pretty obvious!

Rag and Bone

Community Expert

Have a look at this discussion, and the Mike Russell video referenced there.

Hope this helps.

J

Jayme27461354c5lkAuthor

Participant

I'll have another look at that youtube tutorial (seen all of that before posting) but maybe I've missed something. This isn't about me hearing myself through the live monitor delayed, I don't need to hear myself while I'm recording. The issue is that when I play back my recording it's not recording it in time, its delaying the recording so than my sax playing is out of time with the backing track when I go back a listen to what I've recorded. Surely Audtion has a simple setting like audacity that can accomodate this so when I play back the recording of my sax playing its in time with the backing track. Audacity can do it and its cheap and free, I find it hard to believe there isn't a setting for this in Audition.

Rag and Bone

Community Expert

So, you're listening on headphones to backing track while recording the sax, and the resulting recording isn't in time with the backing, is that right?

Sorry, I don' t have any more ideas for you. Perhaps someone with more knowledge will chime in.

I'm not familiar with Audacity, but if it solves the problem, I'd guess you could just use that for the recording, and then, if you like, export to Audition for further work.

BTW, the wireless system would introduce latency, as would the Focusrite.

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