Tascam 1641 USB Interface = PURE LATENCY!

[PeteLaramee]

I recently installed this interface to run with my Sonar Power Studio and started recording my brother's drums. This is causing more latency issues than I had with my other USB interface.

While recording drums the 10 tracks are a tad late, but they are consistent and I can just nudge them into place. But why the hell am I having issues when just recording guitars? I'm using no more than two tracks at a time. I did't have this issue with my Sonar 2 input interface. I knew I should've upgraded to a firewire.

Anyone here ever use one of these?

 

[mboogman]

Check your buffer settings. Generally, anything over 256 will give a noticeable latency when tracking.

 

[Code001]

Check your buffer settings. Generally, anything over 256 will give a noticeable latency when tracking.

+1 to checking latency settings. That said, I much prefer Firewire to USB.

Edit: Almost forgot, I was getting crazy latency yesterday on a 32 buffer on my device. Turns out it was the plugins I was tracking with. Try running your DAW in low latency mode if the buffer issue doesn't fix it.

 

[PeteLaramee]

Check your buffer settings. Generally, anything over 256 will give a noticeable latency when tracking.

+1 to checking latency settings. That said, I much prefer Firewire to USB.

Edit: Almost forgot, I was getting crazy latency yesterday on a 32 buffer on my device. Turns out it was the plugins I was tracking with. Try running your DAW in low latency mode if the buffer issue doesn't fix it.

Thanks for the info guys. I'm going to have to get my wife involved since I only understand some of this.

 

[Sixtonoize]

You might also want to look into automatic latency compensation.
In my experience, reducing the Buffer size will help if you're getting latency with monitoring, but can cause crazy artifacts if it's too low.

With Latency Comp, you can have a larger buffer because you're effectively telling the program to "nudge" the tracks into the correct place automatically. This won't help if you need the device for monitoring, though, because the latency is still there, but it will take care of the need to re-align the tracks for playback.

 

[Greazygeo]

Good luck with usb and alot of tracks. With a couple tracks it was ok for me. Other than that i've always run fw of some sort.

Like the others suggested, turn off plugins and try different buffer settings. Also turn of any computer programs / devices you are not using while recording. Lots of stuff run in the background.

Some interfaces allow for some sort of direct monitoring, not sure if that will help lining tracks up. I ran into that with Cubase.

 

[PeteLaramee]

You might also want to look into automatic latency compensation.
In my experience, reducing the Buffer size will help if you're getting latency with monitoring, but can cause crazy artifacts if it's too low.

With Latency Comp, you can have a larger buffer because you're effectively telling the program to "nudge" the tracks into the correct place automatically. This won't help if you need the device for monitoring, though, because the latency is still there, but it will take care of the need to re-align the tracks for playback.

Yea - For drums I've been nudging for playback and then if he needs to go back and punch in something I have to remember to put the tracks back where they were. I also have to remember to turn down those tracks' volume because it will otherwise throw him off (and just listen to the click & scratch track).

This is something we've adapted to, but it still sucks. What is pissing me off is having to do this same thing for guitar parts.

Good luck with usb and alot of tracks. With a couple tracks it was ok for me. Other than that i've always run fw of some sort.

Like the others suggested, turn off plugins and try different buffer settings. Also turn of any computer programs / devices you are not using while recording. Lots of stuff run in the background.

Some interfaces allow for some sort of direct monitoring, not sure if that will help lining tracks up. I ran into that with Cubase.

I don't run any other programs while recording and I have all plug-ins turned off. I will definitely check the buffer settings.

Like I said above this is causing me more problems with just recording two tracks at a time because the latency doesn't seem consistent. If none of these suggestions work I think I'll uninstall the Tascam when we finish recording drums and reinstall my 2-input Sonar interface.