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Anonymous

Question

How to make latency compensation work? OR - suggestions for a small interface that DOES work?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
November 29, 2011
8 replies
28347 views

I'm using a Roland UA-3FX interface with Audition 5.5 on windows 7.

If I load in a drum loop on one track and then record some bass on another track (monitoring direct though my interface), the recorded bass is slightly but noticably delayed from the drums.

As I understand it, the ASIO driver and Audition, between them, should be working out any latency and compensating for it.Any settings I can fiddle with? Can't find anything.

I did try using the ASIO4All driver which does have adjustable latency compensation in its settings, but this either wasn't enough or didn't do anything at all (not sure which!)

If it's an issue with the driver for the UA-3FX, can anyone else recommend a good small interface which can record in time?it's a shame 'cos the UA-3FX actually sounds great.

Ivan

This topic has been closed for replies.

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vnhllsng

Participant

Uhm. Sorry for necroposting, but I think I might have a solution.

I was having exactly the same problem on Audition CS6, and probably dislocated my brain trying to solve it. I even read this whole thread in in hope to find a solution. So this is for those poor souls who come after me:

My problem was in mismatching sample rates of my session and my interface. That's it.

What I noticed is that I was trying to write in a session I made a while ago. Actually, it was a copy. I was recording several instruments, and decided to make one template session with a click track, guide tracks, markers for song structure and stuff. And then copy this template instead of configuring a new session all the time. And that template was in 44100 Hz. About six months later I decided to put a new bass track, but I've moved to a new audio interface which allows 88100 Hz. So I had my session copied from my template, with 44100 Hz sample rate and my interface set to 88100 Hz.

Then when I was trying to set some experiments, I made a new session, and recorded click using the simplest loop-back: i just put a mic to my monitor. And everything worked. That puzzled me even more. And then when I turned back to the problematic session thinking that what I've experienced earlier is just a glitch, and maybe rebooting my system helped. But the latency compensation didn't work again and only then I started to think how these two sessions could be different and remembered that the one I made earlier had a different sample rate. I just didn't think about it before, because I'm used to work in one sample rate all the time.

So yeah. Sorry if my response is too long and please forgive me my English.

H

hawkenator24

Participating Frequently

I just purchased the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 with a Rode NT1A mic and tested it on Audition cs6. I tested the timing and latency and saw a MAJOR improvement. I was actually able to monitor my speech without using the direct monitor function on the interface with no noticeable latency. Yes, I know there is some latency but not enough for me to hear myself as an echo or for recorded vocals to be out of sync with an instrumental. I was previously using a blue snowball usb mic and the latency was absolutely unusable. There was NO way to monitor yourself while recording without a ridiculous echo. Also, the timing was so off that I had to visually align every track after it was recorded which took FOREVER. In summary, my current interface seems to have solved these problems. I just got it and haven't had much time to use it but I will post an update with any new info.

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Anonymous

hawkenator24 wrote:
I just purchased the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 with a Rode NT1A mic and tested it on Audition cs6. I tested the timing and latency and saw a MAJOR improvement. I was actually able to monitor my speech without using the direct monitor function on the interface with no noticeable latency. Yes, I know there is some latency but not enough for me to hear myself as an echo or for recorded vocals to be out of sync with an instrumental. I was previously using a blue snowball usb mic and the latency was absolutely unusable. There was NO way to monitor yourself while recording without a ridiculous echo. Also, the timing was so off that I had to visually align every track after it was recorded which took FOREVER. In summary, my current interface seems to have solved these problems. I just got it and haven't had much time to use it but I will post an update with any new info.

Note that this topic isn't about the amount of latency - it's about Audition's ability to compensate for the latency reported by an ASIO driver, however small or large. Assuming you're on PC, were you using ASIO drivers with the Snowball? If so, that suggests that either there was something wrong with the drivers or their setup, OR that there is still, in fact, a problem with the latency compensation in CS6.

It may be that you are still experiencing the problem with the Focusrite, just not so noticeably due to the lower latency. Maybe try the loopback test I and others have mentioned earlier in the thread?

_durin_

Community Manager

We've got a bug written to investigate this further. With the basic output->input latency test, I'm seeing much higher-than-expected latency values at almost all sample rates on Mac OS X. I'll incorporate the notes from this thread into the bug (I've already put a link to it) and look for topomorto's related bug so we have all the information together.

Thanks! Y'all are awesome.

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Anonymous

...and look for topomorto's related bug so we have all the information together.

Durin,

Your reply came up as I was talking to your support engineer Yatharth about my case (number 0182860328, if you haven't already found it ).

He was good enough to do the same test as us guys here have been doing and.... his win 7 x64 system also had similar problems with CS5.5 (he was getting 25ms uncompensated lag - he was using ASIO4All with his internal interface, and he also had the same result as me with ASIO4all insofar as juggling the 'latency compensation' sliders did nothing on his system - his lag remained constant).

Any more information I can give you? let me know ~

The only thing that I haven't mentioned in this thread so far is that I tried the same test on a Vista system, and was getting the same problems.

TheJackAttack wrote:
Now however I'll be playing around in the preferences and menus looking for any clue though since this is built in compensation I doubt I'll find anything.

The support chap couldn't find any other relevant settings either. I was hoping he'd give me some secret "put this value in this xml file in this directory and say 3 hail marys" technique, but... no.

_durin_

Community Manager

There aren't any user-facing parameters for latency-compensation. I'm seeing similar results on my Win7x64 system as well, and the bug has been assigned to a developer for additional research and fixing.

I'll let you know what we find, and if I can offer any advice for now other than manual adjustment.

A

Anonymous

Hello again all, hope you and any seagoing craft are fine.

Got the hookup cables for the presonus Inspire firewire thing. Plugged in and it worked fine straight off the bat.

This is the driver I'm using....

Anyway, back to my latency compensation issues (are you bored yet? I am)

With Auditon:

Less lag than before, but still about 14ms, which is still unusable for anything that needs to sound in time.

With Reaper:

Much better than Audition - that's about 2.2 ms.

This is with the interface latency set at 12.5ms, so compensation is happening,

But not quite the accuracy that Reaper managed with the Roland USB interface.

But Reaper allows you to Fiddle About :

With a total of 100 samples worth of compensation added:

Close enough for jazz.

So we've ruled out driver specific issues, and it's not USB, cos the same happens on firewire.

So, I will probably try to contact Adobe in the UK...

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Anonymous

Pretty mild in Cambridge too... cold enough for the cat to moan about being thrown out, but it's quite sensitive!

It was recommended to me to try Cockos Reaper, and lo and behold...

Absolutely spot on, to within a sample or two.

That was with the native driver. The ASIO4All driver was still problematic, again with the sliders making no difference, So I'll write off my ASIO4all installation unless I can get it working in reaper.

A

Anonymous

Yes, Reaper is very good, and very good value. I use it a little and it's my son's main audio application. It has the advantage that, if you have bought Audition, you can import that as an editor when you need its features.

Here, as I said, both Reaper and Audition have no latency problem. If Reaper works well for you, that probably rules out a usb problem, but it does leave the question of what is causing the Audition latency issue.

If the Edirol asio drivers are working well, there is no point in trying to use asio4all unless you want to try using multiple audio interfaces (which probably won't be satisfactory anyway because of sync issues between the clocks).

A

Anonymous

It has the advantage that, if you have bought Audition, you can import that as an editor when you need its features.

I suppose there would be some sense in that, and as you say, it's cheap - although that's extra ££ on top of what I paid for Audition...

If Reaper works well for you, that probably rules out a usb problem, but it does leave the question of what is causing the Audition latency issue.

Seems fair to say that : it looks like if CS5.5 did what Reaper does, it would be working!

Might be time for a call to support! There is a uk number, 0207 365 0735. I don't know what people's experience of them is....

If the Edirol asio drivers are working well, there is no point in trying to use asio4all unless you want to try using multiple audio interfaces (which probably won't be satisfactory anyway because of sync issues between the clocks).

I was only putting ASIO4All into the mix to test the theory that the roland native driver wasn't reporting its latencies correctly.... as it turns out, that wasn't helpful, but It's quite difficult to eliminate all the possible variables working on just one system!

I was considering grabbing a firewire interface from ebay but I have a dreaded Ricoh chipset so not sure if that's just going to be a different kind of pain.

I'll probably carry on with the Reaper trial for a bit and see if it's stable on days other than the Lord's day.

A

Anonymous

OK, so... I am getting similar problems with Ableton Live, too. CS5.5 is off the hook for now!

Thanks for the help. Wlll keep you updated!

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

If you look at the ASIO4ALL FAQ, it gives you some information about how to feed info back to them, and also a link to a diagnostic tool. Maybe the way to go, and I'm sure that they'd appreciate the information anyway.

A

Anonymous

I've replied to this existing thread: http://mtippach.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=likelynotabugbutthereisaproblem&thread=2733&page=1

In the meantime, time to look for the best workaround!

Best I came up with so far was to put a negative delay (31.92ms) on the recorded track, solo it, then bounce the master to a new track..

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

topomorto wrote:
As I understand it, the ASIO driver and Audition, between them, should be working out any latency and compensating for it.Any settings I can fiddle with? Can't find anything.

Perhaps you can tell me exactly what the mechanism might be for this to be worked out? I can see that it could be compensated for, but how, without a setup procedure, could you measure it? What is compensated for is VST delay, but I'm not aware that Audition makes any attempt to run tracks early to compensate for direct monitoring - which is why there are so many complaints about it.

I'm not saying it's impossible, because clearly it isn't. But without Audition having some sort of means of measuring round-trip latency (which would be quite complex, because you would need to time a known-start signal though the interface and operating system), I don't think that compensation can be any more than a guess.

A

Anonymous

I thought the basic idea is that the ASIO driver reports the inbound and outbound latency. Assuming the manufacturer writes the driver, they are in a privileged position as they know the basic hardware latency - and the driver also knows the current buffer sizes. The DAW can then compensate for that, by 'playing early' and moving recordings forward slightly.

This article (from NI) talks about the ‘things that can be known’ :

http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/748/%22Overall+Latency%22+Demystified%3A+why+does+my+NATIVE+INSTRUMENTS+software+report+a+greater+audio+latency+since+I+updated+it%3F

The ‘processing’ latency shouldn’t really be an issue in my case.

It may be true that there is still some guesswork involved (e.g. time it takes for the data to move through the OS, as described in the NI article) - but in that case, there needs to be a user definable adjustment somewhere to compensate for it. I guess this should really be on the driver, but seeing as it apparently doesn’t always work, it would be nice if Audition had it as a user-definable setting too (“Ignore reported latency and use these figures instead”) which you could calibrate by doing a manual round - trip test with an impulse or drum sound or something, recording from one track to another (which I might try later, actually, to see if I can refine my 30ms figure)

A

Anonymous

What we have here is a screenshot showing that the audio (a square wave) passing through Audition 3.01 via my UA-3FX using asio has negative latency.

The top track is the original The UA-3FX is plugged analog output to input. Track 2 is the recording of this signal using asio.

Track 3 doesn't show the signal recorded through the same hardware loop using the WDM drivers. The latency in that case is approximately 70 ms so the square wave is way off to the right.

There obviously is some sort of compenstion occurring somewhere when asio drivers are in use.

A

Anonymous

I use a UA-3FX with Windows 7 64-bit, but am still using Audition 3.01 since the trial of CS5.5 expired. Unfortunately, I didn't really test for latency during the trial period, but all I can say is that I have no problems in 3.0 here. I did some tests quite recently by playing back audio on one track through phono cables between the UA-3FX's output and input and recording on another track. I couldn't detect any latency at all, which surprised me, so I, too, would be interested in learning more about latency compensation. All the effects were switched off for the test, of course.

You must be using the Advanced driver setting on the UA-3FX to be using asio, and the only other thing I can think of is maybe some usb problem. That Roland is a usb 1.1 device, and I had huge problems with the machine with an ATI chipset until I found the correct ATI "usb filter" driver. There seem to be different versions of this driver for different generations of chipset.

A

Anonymous

Thanks for the reply. I am definitely using the advanced mode and the ASIO driver.

The USB Chipset is Intel. I suppose I could mess with USB drivers but unless there's a promising-looking solution, that's usually deeper than I like to dig (I was an IT guy in a previous life, and it's taught me to give up fairly fast - yes, I might have fixed it after 4 days, but you can't get the 4 days back!)

I think I have worked out that the offset is about 30ms, so I'll just try and find a quick and easy way of moving recorded tracks back 30ms. (I'll ask that in another question).

I would still be interested if anyone can suggest an interface that they have working in 5.5 which works properly in this respect.

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