Midiman Audio Buddy and Bloody Latency....
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Posted on May 15, 2003 05:15 am
stephie
Member Since: Apr 11, 2003
Hi Guys,
It's me again. Still not getting a decent signal for recording my guitar. When I plug in through the 'mic-in' on the SB LIve card I get an awful lot of noise. Read somewhere that the Audio Buddy might solve the problem and let me record through my 'line-in'. Has anyone had any experience of the Audio Buddy?
Also I am still suffering with sodding latency when using the effects in Sonar 2 XL. Can anyone direct me to a decent article showing ways to reduce latency?
Thanks again guys,
Stephie
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May 15, 2003 05:55 am i can't help you with the latency as I've never gotten any decent performance out of my SB Live card, but maybe I can offer something on the Audio Buddy.
I've been using an Audio Buddy for over a year now and it's been a useful little preamp for mics, guitar, and bass. Now I have a small mixer that does all that and more, and I even paid less for the mixer. The Audio Buddy's nice, and it's gonna sound better than the SB Live's preamp, but a small mixer might be a better investment. Here's another thread from earlier in the week www.homerecordingconnecti...=2060&frm=2
i think you'll find that for about the same $ a small Behringer UB series mixer will become an invaluable addition to you setup.
But for anything serious, really, another soundcard will make a world of difference. I have both an SB Live and an M-Audio Delta 44 installed right now, and the SB can't hang like the Delta can. Recording quality, recording track quantity, playback without dropouts, latency, routing options, everything, the SB just chokes where the Delta does fine.
May 15, 2003 06:56 am OK, well, first let me say that you MUST go download the free update to Sonar 2.2, with that comes a slew of new stuff incluing support for ASIO drivers, which are a MUCH lower latency driver type, however, SBs ASIO drivers suck, but I have heard an urban legend that there are some hacked ASIO drivers out there for the live that are actually almost decent. There are links to them scattered around this forum I think, or maybe in our links section...I don't recall for sure.
It's very hard to take your existing setup and "get lower latency", as the latency is determined by a combination of your system power, your sound card, the type of driver used and the application itself...you can mess with buffer settings and such, but sometimes this can cause more harm than good if you don't know what you are doing.
Seriously, your best bet is to get a higher-end sound card, rightnow at Musician's Friend the Audiophile 2496 service.bfast.com/bfast/c...mp;bfmtype=gear is on sale for a meeger $149 (USD). That is the card I use and in Sonar 2.2 I have a latency under 10ms, plus direct monitoring so I hear no latency when recording. Since you use the word "bloody" makes me wonder if you are from the UK, if so MF may or may not ship there, not sure...
As for Audio Buddy, I have no experience with it, so I really can't add much.
May 15, 2003 08:35 am Aye, I am from the UK (Scotland).
If I went with a UB Behringer Mixer would that cure the problem with low sound levels? At the moment I can hardly hear my guitar even when I used a Zoom 504II preamp.
I don't have much dosh so need to get this right first time.
May 15, 2003 12:39 pm it's hard to say if a preamp would solve your problem with low sound levels since we don't know exactly what the problem is. I've never had any trouble getting good levels from the preamp on the front of my Live drive. I've always thought it was a good handy, pre being right there in front of me all the time, great for just "jotting down ideas" if a riff or rythym pops into my head. I can say for sure that a mixer will let you boost you levels conciderably, but if for instance something's wrong with your soundcard, it of course won't fix that. ultimately it won't hurt to have a mixer.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
May 16, 2003 11:10 pm And I must urgently tell you that you cant use the mic in on the SB card you should be using the Line in for recording your guitar as it is a line level instrument, not a mic.
And I will also attest to the third party hacked drivers for the SB being good. They will bring latency down a bit and the ASIO portion of the drivers are shall we say a bit more stable then the Creative drivers are.
