How do you deal with latency when recording?

[mikeastarb]

It's a question that's been on my mind for a while now but, how do you all deal with latency while recording from an ASIO device and when recording from MIDI? Do you cut down the buffer size temporarily and deal with the artifacts so you can time things correctly? Or do you record it without listening to what's happening and then touch everything up in post?

[Rozovian]

The most important thing is to get the timing and performance down. Turn off all other programs, turn off tracks you don't need when recording, get the latency down to something tolerable.

If nothing else helps, render your whole project to audio, import that into a blank project, and record the parts you need to record there. midi should not have that much latency, but recording audio on an older machine can be a problem.

[GallenWolf]

I reduce my buffers down to like 32 when "tracking". If the sounds are crackling, perhaps use a vsti that doesn't need much resources to playback? Then swap it back to your desired VI when mixing. Disable other stuff you don't use, wireless, lan, bluetooth, coffee maker, antivirus etc.

[mikeastarb]

Cool, thanks for the reply. I've been making really not good music for a few years now and have finally resolved to take things a lot more seriously and asking questions seems to be the best way to learn (instead of my old "figure everything out myself" method).

[mikeastarb]

thanks for the reply This is what I do now but, I suppose it never occurred to me to shut down steam, skype, dropbox, etc.

[Kanthos]

Definitely disable your wireless and LAN devices if you're on Windows. I use my laptop as the heart of my live keyboard rig, and it's a really good machine, and I still disable the network devices to guarantee there aren't any clicks in my audio. Maybe it's overkill with this machine, but with my older laptop, I had to do that.

[mikeastarb]

Gotcha, that will probably help solve some issues that I've had. My laptop that I'm using currently is a Dell Studio that's about 3 or 4 years old now and I've always had just a small but noticeable amount of delay between my key presses and the sound being rendered. Thanks for the reply!