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Exigeous
Inspiring
October 19, 2020
Question

Real-time monitoring with effects WITHOUT delay - what hardware do I need?

  • October 19, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 2427 views

As the title says I want/need to monitor my mic in real-time with effects (reverb, delay) for a multitrack recording. When I do this now with no effect added I'm getting a roughly 200ms+ delay but with reverb added it's like 4 SECONDS. Here's a brief overview of my setup:

 

Core i9 10900k @ 5.2Ghz all cores
32GB DDR4-3600 Ram

Samsung 970 Pro 512GB NVMe

Samsung 970 Evo 1TB NVMe

2x Samsung 850 SATA SSD (in RAID stripe)

Motherboard audio

Creative Labs SBLive 5.1 USB soundcard

io|2 XLR<>USB (10+ years old but still works fine otherwise)

 

I'm a saxophone player so I want to be able to monitor my XLR mic in real time with reverb, delay, chorus, etc. while I play with the backing tracks my bandmates provide. I did this years ago on a (now very old and weak) Macbook Pro with GarageBand and the exact same io|2 XLR<>USB interface I still have and it worked great. I got real-time effects with no noticable delay coming out of the headphone jack of the Macbook and it was perfect. I'm considering an older $200 Mac Mini as that seems like the simple solution but I already spend more than double that a year for my Creative Cloud subscription so why wouldn't I do this on my BEAST of a PC instead?

 

I've played around withing ASIO vs MME settings but it seems none of my devices support ASIO except for Voice Meeter Banana which I'm sure will add it's own delay so I didn't spend much time there. I understand that it takes time to process the signal, etc. but if a my Macbook Pro from 10 YEARS ago could do it just fine I would assume a brand new top of the line Intel build would, right?

 

So what am I missing? Can this all be done in software in Audition or do I need to shell out for an Mac Mini and go back to GarageBand? I considered doing a Hackintosh and while I've worked in IT management for years and I'm sure after enough research and time I could get that going I don't really have that time.

 

Thanks!!

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1 reply

Exigeous
ExigeousAuthor
Inspiring
October 23, 2020

Anyone? Is this that complex of a question?

Exigeous
ExigeousAuthor
Inspiring
October 27, 2020

Oh well, guess this can't be done - with the other major limitations of Audition I guess I just need to move on to something free like Audacity.

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 4, 2024

I have a Windows 11 PC with a 13900K and 64GB DDR5

I have a Zoom H6 recorder all ASIO drivers installed.

There is a noticable latency when I use no effects.

But the more effects I use, the more latency there is. In fact, there is so much latency I can hardly add any more than a simple reverb. 

Again, I am using the latest ASIO drivers. What am I doing wrong? Is the problem with Audition itself?


I'm afraid that your expectations are too high. The more you put in the way of a signal that's fed into a computer, the longer the round trip takes - and if you add a load of effects, that just makes it worse. Whether you like it or not, you are up against the Laws of Physics here. The only way you get zero monitoring latency is to take the monitor signal from your sound device directly.