A thread for the ongoing saga of my new recording setup (and your advice).

2) Turn the buffer to a value of less than 1024 samples. You can also access this from the Reason preferences panel.

3) There should be a Control Panel app that installs with the Ozone drivers. Take a look at that & make sure that the Sync is set to Internal.

xpost

Cakewalk should also have its own preferences section where you can adjust the latency buffer. People are often freaked out by latency without realizing that it's almost always adjustable.

As far as things being "too adjustable" goes, this seriously shouldn't be a worry. A rule of thumb is to start at a setting of 256 samples. If you get digital glitching or "stuttering", crank it to 512, which will still you let play the MIDI keyboard with tolerable latency.

NEW PROBLEM: Even when set at medium latency, output through the ozone buzzes out and/or slows to half-speed every couple minutes. Installing ASIO4All seems to be cutting down on this, but it's still just totally horrible; not the hugest problem when it comes to recording MIDI, but I'm gonna get pretty pissed off if I get that in the middle of a vocal take, or something.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: ??? -- Upping the latency would help, right, but I already feel like the timing is dodgy on audio recordings. Is there anything that could possibly help this, apart from better drivers?

- Echo Indigo I/O PCMCIA soundcard
- basic $99 M-Audio MIDI keyboard (larger range; it doesn't have the programmable knobs that the Ozone and Oxygen have, but that seems more useful for performing live and/or recording supercomplex Tangerine Dream style analog synth sweeps and burbles, neither of which I really do; I think I'll be content to automate any other knobs on-screen)

Either way, I've already (a) returned the Ozone, and (b) spent the next three hours running around town learning that nobody actually stocks the Indigo in-store. Hopefully I can find it somewhere, cause I kinda like having nearby return options if it doesn't actually get the latency down.

So yeah, hopefully the PCMCIA card will sort it out -- if only I can find one in the city. (Someone tried to sell me a $400 "substitute," which would have been half-tempting if I didn't still need to replace the keyboard.)

(By the way, many many thanks to everyone who's helped me out here!)

Yes, its about the capabilties of the hardware/driver not the interface, think about it USB is fine for requests to write/read data from a HDD, 1ms is practically a geological time period in comparison.

Latency only really counts when you are playing/adding effects live.

PS shows what you know, Pete, I looked in the phone book and there's no such thing as a jerk store!

Here's a short article on latency that reinforces my understanding:

http://soundwave.com/Htm/Articles/April/Audio_Latency.htm

If you're having problems because you are monitoring though the computer, I'd say a better buy would be a small mixing desk, removing the latency issue altogether.

Try some new hardware.

My question is simply: did replacing with another soundcard help? Is it a USB one? (This would mean that USB wasn't the problem, I'm hoping this is the case.)

(The upside to all this is I've spent about 16 hours mightily cleaning up inside my computer to see if this helped. It didn't, but.)

Man, I dream of the day when I can get a dedicated music computer, an interface, a legal version of Pro Tools or Ableton, and maybe 4 decent mics (not to mention a place to use it all), but that's looking at like three grand right there.

Oh, hello: I think I'm about to do this? I now do all my day-to-day computing on a little netbook anyway, so I'm thinking of putting together a good recording system and then ... well, not really needing anything new, computer-wise, for years and years.

Question 1: Does anyone have any experience with ADK Pro Audio? I'm pretty sure I'd get this box:
http://www.adkproaudio.com/systems/viewsystem.cfm?recordid=134

Question 2: Does anyone have any experience with this interface? I'm pretty sure I'd get it. (Or should I really move over from USB to Firewire?)
http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?product=15185

Those two things + new budget monitors (KRK 5) + PodXT + maybe even doing some crappy DIY room treatment -- I feel like this should be functional enough that it'd be hard to develop and major additional needs. Am I fooling myself? I don't work on anything particularly hi-fi, I don't do much room recording, I hardly ever get up to even 10 tracks in a song -- I feel like a set-up like this should be able to breeze through anything I do at top quality.

ADK pro audio have a pretty good rep, the main dude seems to know his shit, but i have no personal experience with them.

i used to have an E-MU card, a 1620 i think, but i wasn't a huge fan of it tbh. maybe the newer stuff is better? if you're only ever likely to record 2 tracks at once USB will be fine, i've never had any problem with stereo recording via USB, though firewire is usually recommended for anything more..

my tascam 4-track died recently and i'm trying to decide what to do about it:
1) pay to get it fixed or buy a "new" 4-track
2) invest in a better set-up for recording on my computer
3) buy a digital stand-alone multitrack, probably this: https://zoomcorp.com/en/us/digital-mixer-multi-track-recorders/multi-track-recorders/r20/

i already record 50/50 analog/digital - i do some stuff only on the computer (in reason), and even the stuff that starts on the 4-track, i usually end up adding more to it digitally once i bounce the tape recordings onto the computer. the rational move seems to be to abandon the 4-track and just focus on recording on the computer. however, i don't really enjoy recording on the computer as much as on the 4-track. it's more finicky and slower and has too many possibilities and it's more likely that something will go wrong that i'll have to invest time in trying to figure out how to fix, etc etc, ultimately i'm old and semi-stuck in my ways. which makes the digital multitrack idea an interesting middle ground - it's not as tied to dying tech but it's still a standalone option with physical faders and knobs etc. but maybe even that is trying to stay in some past that will probably disappear in the next few years?

I sympathize, NA. My Portastudio still works but it's honestly more trouble than it's worth these days. Because I know I'm just going to end up digitizing what goes into it, the only reason to record on cassettes is retro perversity.

For a long time I took the tape outs from an analog mixer into a cheap-ass USB interface. That worked fine, because I was doing one instrument at a time. Can't do a full band with meaningful separation, but then I rarely need to do that anyways.

Last year I broke down and got an Alesis mixer that has a USB out. It was really easy and I made a bunch of records with a bunch of people (pandemic energy).

So I'm still tracking in a world where microphones are pointed at bits of wood and metal and meat. But then I can manipulate the tracks in the computer so it's best of both worlds, maybe?

yeah if i was going to improve my digital setup it would probably involve buying a better interface that allows for live multitrack recording and boosting the memory on my old powerbook that i use for recording to try and speed it up some

i do think it's not just retro perversity that keeps me using the 4-track. i know how to get the sounds i want out of it and it keeps the recording process free from distraction/option overload.

I say stick with the analog 4-track! It's your instrument, if you like it and it's inspirational just embrace it imo.

that's a good point. i think part of the appeal of the digital multitrack is just being able to justify buying a new gadget. but my friend/drummer has offered to give me his 4-track that he never uses, so i should probably use the money i'm saving on that to upgrade my computer recording setup.

re: digital multitrack, have you checked out the Tascam mixer line? Model 12 is digital, 16 & 24 are analog mixers with digital recording capabilities. Very modern Portastudio.

those do look cool. for now i bought a USB mixer to use as a better interface and also a basic drum mixer for recording band stuff on the 4-track. i'm still thinking about upgrading my computer setup and/or eventually buying a standalone digital multitrack.