Toneport and latency

[Justinginn]

This summer I bought a Toneport because my computer's sound card gave me a lot of trouble with latency whenever I tried to record. I figured that the Toneport would solve all my problems, but now whenever I try to record something the latency is much worse... almost a second of pure lag. My computer is fairly powerful... and I've heard others of you saying that even a rather underpowered computer can produce good recordings. My computer is a bit cluttered, though I close most of the applications that take up a lot of memory before trying to record. According to Windows Task Manager, the CPU never gets above 30% load, but the latency is still there and makes recording just about impossible.

Any advice? Do I need to wipe my hard disk, buy a new computer, or give up??

Thanks.

 

[jackthehack]

Disconnect from internet FIRST, then disable/turn off ALL anti-virus type software. Use task mgr. and close any/all running applications/processes not needed for recording

 

[Justinginn]

Disconnect from the internet... sounds good. I'll try it.

 

[jackthehack]

You HAVE to disconnect from internet prior to disabling/shutting down anti-virus software as a Windows system will otherwise wind up infected with something nasty in minutes if you don't. MOST recording software advising turning AV software off if dropout/latency issues are experienced. Not a bad idea to defrag your hard drive as well.

Another potential issue is that even if you have a system with a "high-speed" CPU, it may not have come with a corresponding high speed hard drive and has I/O bottleneck issues.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

+1 on the disconnect from internet.  Stop any thing like a wireless connection or anything that continually "checks" on its status.  Those will cause all kinds of trouble.  On the Mbox Mini that I have there is also a hardware control that you can change in the software package.  For mixing the latency is huge, for recording it is minimal, but you have to set it.  Finally, if the box is connected with a USB port, or some other port, it might be a good idea to lower the number of devices that the USB card/mobo has to handle/power.  Good luck.
Patrick

 

[dbw]

Don't defrag.  Defragging used to do something on FAT filesystems but it's totally pointless on NTFS filesystems, which all modern Windows OSes use.

 

[tfarny]

I recently 'upgraded' from an XP laptop to a Vista one. Old machine recorded great - 1.5 ghz cpu and 1 meg ram. The new one is far faster and more powerful, but struggles with the toneport. +1 to disconnecting, also turn off your wireless antenna. What I also needed to do was go deeper into vista and turn off all the graphic accelerations - the desktop looks just like XP after you do that. It made it much better but i still have the occasional dropout.
There's also a buffer setting somewhere in your gearbox software; mess with that.
Hope it helps.

 

[gnome]

iv never had any latency problems with mine on my laptop

what are you recording into?

is it the recordig that are lagging or just the playback?

 

[Justinginn]

I'm recording into my desktop. It's fairly powerful... 2 GB Ram, I think 2.2 Ghz processor, it was fairly beastly when I got it. It's pretty well cluttered and I wanna wipe the hardrive to get rid of all the junk I put on it a few years ago when computer games were the coolest thing in elementary school...  :icon_biggrin:

So if I get around to it, I bet that'll help.

 

[Justinginn]

And it's definitely the recording. Playback's fine.

 

[gnome]

mmm all i can suggest it clearing soem of teh crap and checking that the default settigns don't involve high latency levels, maybe you need to change amount of buffers etc. to increase speed

 

[Justinginn]

Well recently my computer's been getting more and more messed up, so I think I just need to wipe the hard drive and not install all the junk I did when I was 10.  :doh:
Hopefully that'll fix most of my problems.

 

[Volitions Advocate]

Depending on the software you use you can actually compensate for latency.  I had a good 300ms or so of lag on my machine and I adjusted some options in my software and it fixed it.  I dont really know how this works or if it will work on all computers/os's but its worth a look.

 

[Justinginn]

Thanks for the advice. I suppose I should've mentioned that I'm being cheap and using Krystal (it's free)... I'll upgrade sooner or later, but right now I need a tremolno more.

 

[ognolman]

Don't defrag.  Defragging used to do something on FAT filesystems but it's totally pointless on NTFS filesystems, which all modern Windows OSes use.

I've seen a significant performance improvement defragging under Vista Pro on occasion.  I doubt it will help in this case, but it might.  But I suspect the optimization benefit has less to do with the type of filesystem than it has to do with increased access speeds from newer disks and new OS features like automatic background defragging.

I would check to see what services I had running and try shutting as many of them down as possible.  The comments about antivirus software are correct, but there can be many other applications that are interefering as well.  Possibly something else is hogging resources or constantly triggering the A/V software to run a scan.  But my normal plan of attack is to run msconfig.exe and disable startup applications and services one-by-one until I've found the offending application.  I would do this before I blew away the OS and started from scratch.  Unless you actually do have a virus that has compromised the A/V software...  Also, before I shut services down that I don't know what they are I usually google the service name to find out what it does and who made it.

Finally, most mfgrs have tips on their website about how to improve latency that I've found to be helpful, so you might check there if you haven't already.

Edit: And there are some tips here that might be useful, although I think they are mostly about soft synths: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/articles/pcmusician.htm

JBD

 

[WMHOLP]

I used to have latency problems on my old Apple G3 iMac using Pro Tools too.  My interface is a Tascam US-122 USB interface.  I now have a 1.9 Ghz G5 iMac with 1.5 GB of RAM, and use Garageband now.  (It's the last of the Power PC processors, just prior to the release of the Intel processors in the Macs).  Very simple setup.  The latency on the old G3 was as much as 250 ms.

I agree with all previous comments about quitting all other applications and disconnecting from the internet.  I normally don't have any issues with my G5.  If I do, a quick restart takes care of it.  I just ordered myself an early X-Max present...simple, but effective.  It's a Soundcraft Compact 4 mixer.  That should add some additional fun to my recording and practice sessions.  It is basically tailored to computer recording, and you can monitor the input / output with zero latency from the mixer.  I also bought it so I can play along to music on the headphones to have a good control over playback from my iPod and my guitar mix, and not wake the wife and neighbors if I want to do some late night noodling.

 

[Justinginn]

Cool. It's weird... sometimes it'll work while I've got a skype chat open, etc. and have no lag, and other times I'll close everything on my computer, disconnect from the internet, etc. and it will be absolutely terrible. There's something seriously wrong w/ the computer in general so I don't think I'll find a solution until the computer starts opening MS Word without crashing.  :doh:

 

[ognolman]

Cool. It's weird... sometimes it'll work while I've got a skype chat open, etc. and have no lag, and other times I'll close everything on my computer, disconnect from the internet, etc. and it will be absolutely terrible. There's something seriously wrong w/ the computer in general so I don't think I'll find a solution until the computer starts opening MS Word without crashing.  :doh:

Yes, if you have some OS corruption issues or possibly a hardware failure it can play havoc on your trying to record.  Recording digital audio is one of the more demanding tasks you might try to do on a computer just because of the large amount of data it normally involves.  So you start to add stress to things that don't normally get stressed and you can find problems.  Sort of like me trying to get in the habit of running a few miles again after 11 years of sitting on my duff.

Oh, be sure you've got all the latest OS updates, too.  And if your

Good luck,

JBD

 

[Justinginn]

Loosely related to your comment on Windows updates:
Did SP3 crash anyone else's computer? Mine worked in safe mode after some coaxing, and then I was able to system restore, but did anyone else have that problem?

 

[blue313]

Nope, personally haven't had any issues with SP3