Soundcard and Latency Issues

[crag]

So i just got a new laptop for Christmas and have been trying to do a bit of recording on it. When i play my guitar through the laptop it takes about half a second for the sound to come through the speakers, which i'm assuming is because of a crappy soundcard and high latency.

So my question to you lovely people is; are there any ways of reducing latency without having to purchase a new soundcard and if not what would be a suitable way to solve the problem for under £100?

Also when recording i encountered this little problem http://media.putfile.com/Nasty-Noise again i'm guessing it's due to the crappiness of my soundcard but if anyone can help sort it it will be much appreciated.

Cheers:)

[Jon]

You need a new soundcard but there are loooads you can get for under £100.

http://www.maudio.co.uk/products/en_gb/Transit-main.html

[crag]

Ah, makes sense. thank you :)


So how about this particular little gadget http://www.soundcontrol.co.uk/mod_1/pages/mod_1.12/pages/mod_1.12.1/pages/mod_1.12.1.1/pages/index.php?sku=1.1.5.2.1-31-20-163 would it do the job?

[ncrypted]

Okay, here's a simple and completely free way to fix the problem at hand. Look at the manufacturer's website for your built in soundcard. Look for an "ASIO Driver". ASIO is Audio Stream I/O, and it basically bypasses the CPU to let your software talk directly to the sound card. Some manufacturers provide them, some don't.

If you cannot find ASIO drivers for your specific sound card, there is another option. That is to use ASIO4All which is a completely free (as in beer) audio driver that works on all soundcards.

http://www.asio4all.com/

This is an OSS project based on the work of Steinberg Software...the friendly people who brought you Cubase...

To detemine who makes the soundcard for your laptop, do the following:

-Start -> Settings -> Control Panel
-In the Control Panel double click "System"
-Assuming that you are using WinXP, click the "Hardware" tab, and then the "Device Manager" button.
- When the Device manager opens, click the "+" next to the entry for "Sound, video and game controllers" and look for your audio card

As far as the new interface goes, you can't really beat M-Audio for maximizing the quality/value ratio. I use a lot of their gear. However, if you're looking mainy for a simple Guitar/mic recording interface, I think you could possibly do it a bit cheaper with the "Fast Track" USB interface...but that's me making assumptions about your recording goals, and we know what they say assumption is the mother of...

[reggaejunkie001]

What recording program do you use?

[Moseph]

Okay, here's a simple and completely free way to fix the problem at hand. Look at the manufacturer's website for your built in soundcard. Look for an "ASIO Driver". ASIO is Audio Stream I/O, and it basically bypasses the CPU to let your software talk directly to the sound card.

For clarification, it doesn't actually "bypass the CPU" (since that isn't actually possible), but what it does do is minimize the involvement of the operating system, which is usually the reason that latency/stuttering/loss of sync is experienced.