LAG ISSUES with NTRACK and AUDIGY SOUNDCARD, HELLLLP!

I have NTRACK and a soundblaster LIVE soundcard.

When I record the first track all is well

the program/soundcard pairing works in that instance.

the troubles begin when i record the second and third and the rest of the tracks.

the second track slowly becomes out of SYNC with the first track so by the middle of the track timeline it is totally out of sync.

I fixed it for a while by cutting and moveing the second track but it gets worse with each track.

so I need a real fix.

i've studied the help file and just cannot grasp how to fix this problem.

I need somebody to explain this in simple terms that will help me to record with no lag problems.

I've tried to adjust the time lag indicator but I was unable to fix anything. I don't really understand what I was doing.

thanks . TD

Live or Audigy? Audigy supports ASIO drivers; SB Live does not, as I recall. I don't know NTrack at all, but if it is ASIO, somewhere in the "Audio settings" or "Preferencs" area you'll find the ASIO Control panel, and there you set your latency. If NTrack is ASIO and your soundcard is not, that could explain a lot...

Also -- go get Reaper! www.Reaper.fm I've got plenty of choices on my DAW and I use Reaper because I simply prefer Reaper...

have you tried using asio4all as your asio driver?

http://www.asio4all.com/

Yeah, check your drivers. I used n-Track and SB Live running XP and never had any noticeable latency issues with better than 12 tracks recorded, adding individual tracks to a "click" track. I do believe ASIO was NOT the preferred driver but it's been so long since I fired that thing up I no longer remember.

I ued to know a guitarplayer who had the same tempo problem and it took him 6 months fiddling with the software just to discover he just couldn't keep a steady beat himself.

ASIO4ALL should work fine but there are also native ASIO drivers for the SB-Live: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/

A very common situation (typical, even) is for a hardware driver for a soundcard to mis-report its latency or for the DAW to not handle that reported latency correctly or at all (or both).

As you know, digital processing takes time and the driver is supposed to know and report how long AD and DA processing will take at a given sample rate and report it to the DAW, which will then offset the newly recorded tracks in the timeline to make up for that latency. If the driver doesn't report it correctly or the DAW doesn't handle that report correctly, you end up with a track misalignment.

I used to be obsessed with this issue several years ago and encouraged people to do a ping loopback test on their systems. Every single reliable report came back with some amount of misalignment, typically in the 2 ms to 12 ms range. (A ping loopback test merely routes the playback of a ping out the DA and back into the AD -- being careful not to set up a feedback loop in monitoring, of course -- and records that. Obviously, if things are 'right,' the newly recorded copy should match precisely, timewise.)

If you always listen to, say, a drum track you laid down first as your timing guide, the problem shouldn't 'cascade' too badly. But if you were to try to take your timing cues from each just previously recorded track in a series of overdubs, obviously, you could end up drifting far from the original track.

More and more DAWs now include some form of ping loopback track alignment test (including Sonar from v.7, Cubase's hardware compensation, Mackie Traction, and Reaper; possibly others. My version of Sonar, v.6 has a manual adjustment for the WDM driver; the AISO driver panel has a supposed auto adjust but with my MOTU 828mkII I still need to enter an offset number; the auto adjust is inaccurate -- but that's ok because the AISO driver always glitches out on my system, anyhow so I use WDM; I had to do a manual ping loop back -- my offset was, IIRC, 355 samples, or aprox 8 ms; I set it and everything lines up now. Hence, an end to my personal obsession... the rest of you guys have been on your own since then. )

Since most people I had do such ping loopback testing (this is several years ago) did have a misalignment, it led me to the notion that maybe the 'problem' so many folks had/have with digital audio is simply that their systems were not functioning properly with regard to aligning tracks.

In my experience in audio BBs, it's still a relatively unknown and undiscussed issue.

Thinking about it, this may well be why I never had noticeable latency issues using the same card and recording program, I always used only the "click" track to play off of when laying down additional tracks. Is that what you're doing TD?

YES DAK, I do indeed use a clicktrack for the timeing.

It's a bit tricky to adjust the MIDI VOLUME and the instrument volume(line in) so as to fully hear the click and not allow the timeing beat to "get lost" in the mix.

I disabled the system timers and everything went well.

On a gleefully, happier, Note, I fixed the LAG ISSUE with AUDIGY and NTRACK by useing 48000 instead of 44100.

I believe that AUDIGY SB card which I employ is SET at 48000.

So I readjusted in PREFERENCES and now I have several tracks with no DRIFT LAG issues.

I got the main rythym track which is what i always begin with and a goode vocal(eleven takes 'til i got a goode one) and am working on the backing tracks.

thanks for all the replies and know that "IT DOES TAKE A VILLAGE".

Thanks all you villagers

TD

Thanks STRAYCATSTRAT for your timely advice.

I did finde, install and use the ASIO4ALL DRIVER but it turned my fully registered version of NTRACK 2.3 into an unregistered version of NTRACK 24/96; which was a bit weird and a little bit frustrating until i uninstalled the ASIO4ALL driver and reset the preferences back to 48000 for my 2.3 version of NTRACK.

So I then went and got a fully registered 24/96 version which I'll begin playing with a bit later after i finish my newest effort(CYNTHIAS SONG).

Thanks one and all, you cats(miow) and dogs(arf) ROCK!!!!

TD

Tell rizzo and skip i said hi..