A little help please

So I have a Yamaha 10 track mixer, nothing special, but it gets the job done. I have Cubase SE on my computer, and some standard sound card with Stereo Mini input/output/mic plugs. I'm relatively new to recording, but love the idea of not having to pay 50 bucks and hour for a studio. I'm willing to pay the price for a sound that isn't as great, mainly because I'm in college and don't have too much time on my hands anyway - and music recording is a hobby, performance is a major. Anyway, here's my problem...

Mixer is plugged in, my guitar is plugged in, as are the vocal mic and drum machine. I hit record on the computer, and it is set to count 2 measures before it starts recording. I play on the downbeat that it starts, but the sound doesn't register on the computer until a split second later. So I'll play with the click, but when I go back to listen, the sound it off-click. Is there any way to fix this? I was thinking that I might need a new sound card, and if so, does anyone have any suggestions? Also, sometimes it says something about sync, and the recording process stops altogether... I'd like to avoid this and just continue recording because if I start a little before it starts, the click isn't with the song, so it makes everything so much more difficult. Please, any advice would be much appreciated.

Assuming that Cubase SE is similar to Nuendo...

Go to ... Preferences/VST/Auto Monitoring.

... on the pull down menu you should have a choice between manual, while record enabled, while record running and tape machine style.
Try switching between these settings until it works the way you prefer.

Right now, what's happening is you're monitoring the sound after it's been recorded on your hard drive....hence the delay. You want to set it so that you get live monitoring while you record and have it switch back to monitoring from your hard drive during playback.

What you are hearing is as Schmange says latency. One way of curing it is to reduce the number of input buffers in the preferences option. As you are only recording 2 tracks it should not be a biggy.

Actually I don't think this is a latency problem.
Latency is caused by a delay on midi instruments because of the amount of time it takes for the midi signal to trigger the vsti instrument.
In this case, it sounds like he's talking about a monitoring problem.

On Cubase there are several preferences settings depending on whether you are monitoring directly through your computer or using an outboard mixer.
Right now it sounds like he's got his preference on the wrong setting so he's hearing the monitored sound rather than the live one while he's in record mode. (sorta like using a 3 head cassette deck and hitting the Monitor button to hear what's on the tape compared to what's coming from the original source)

No latency is universal between audio and midi and occurs by virtue of electrical signal having to travel from A to B.

There are a number of reasons why latency occurs with regular audio, god knows I have fought with most of them them recently !!

ASIO / WMD or Core Audio drivers, buffer size, sound card quality, HDD access time, Buss speed etc etc will all effect it and providing you can get it down to 20 milliseconds you are in the clear.

The last two times I have had to configure PCs / MACs for audio, the biggest single contributer to latency was the size of the input buffer. This impacts upon the number of simultaneous ins and outs however as the number of ins is only two reducing it should not be a problem.

Latency may be a problem if you monitor through Cubase VST, when you are playing VST Instruments “live” from a MIDI keyboard or when you mix your audio (in situations where high time precision is required). However, the recorded audio will not be affected, since VST takes the latency into account, and adjusts the timing of the recorded audio accordingly.

So I'm right .... thpppppptttttt!!! :cool:

Oh don't be a Booby Mr Schmange !

Since when do you use midi to record vocals ? You could use it to change a patch on a processor however, last time I looked vocal and guitar (that sounded halfway decent) for that was recorded as a sampled audio wave.

You don't.
That's the point I'm making. Latency in Cubase only applies to MIDI and VST instruments because Cubase automatically adjusts the timing on audio recordings.
The problem this guy is having is a delay with recorded audio, so it's a monitoring problem.

The problem he described is very common one with Cubase because there are several ways to monitor signals through the audio card.

In Cubase 5.1 for instance, there's a choice between Tape Type, Record Enable and Global Disable.
One will give you just the sound monitored from your hard drive and is delayed because of the 'latency' for want of a better word.
One will give you both the sound monitored from the hard drive plus the live signal.
One will give you just the live sound and then stitch back to monitoring from the sound card during playback.

Right now he's got it set up to monitor just the recorded sound whether he's playing live or not. He needs to set it up so that while he's recording, it only monitors his live signal, and when he's playing back it switches back to his hard drive.

Yes and it is called latency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency
Latency = delay wether it is Midi or audio or Cubase or Sonar or Logic or Garage band whatever and that is what this guy is hearing. A delay between playing something, recording it and monitoring it.

There are a bunch of causes for it wether it is due to a clog during monitoring or recording, it doesn't matter (until you try and work it out) it is still manifest as a delay during over-dubbing called latency.

With every system I have trouble shot, the problem has been during recording. Now maybe Cubase is different from Sonar, Logic, garage band, Wave lab etc however when I have worked out the kinks with these programs the problem has always been buffer size, wether I'm using a very expensive RME audio card or a cheap soundblaster / onboard sound chip. Now if Cubase does have zero latency between playing and recording (Im not sure the laws of physics permit this as electrical signal conducts at a finite and measurable speed as does the polarization of transistors or magnetic media) as all these processes take time, then yes the problem has to be with monitoring. However it is still latency !!

I have to agree with dr simon on this.

If you are doing a 2 measure count before record, and you go in 2 beats before, it wont start recording for another 2 beats, so your just basically playing to the intro tick. That may be the problem

but the Doctor is prolly right

Well I'll guess we'll have to see if the original poster verifies it.
All I know is that I've never had a problem in 4 years with Cubase having a latency problem when recording audio.
It only happens when using VST instruments and MIDI.
In fact even if I have every extension and control panel running on my computer and have the latency up to around 200., it still won't have audible latency in the audio. (unless you have the monitoring setup incorrectly..in which case, just do what I said above and it'll fix it.)

Arr, that is because once you have hammered out audio latency when you initially set the program up, unless you suddenly start recording like 8 inputs simultaneously, you will not have to ever look at it again.

Unlike recording audio VSTs require varying amounts of system resources hence the more you use the greater the drain on the system which as you rightly point out causes the VST latency thing. The problems are both similar and different !!

Arr, arr...
Technically... I don't care whether we're talking about apples or oranges.
All I care about is fixing this guys problem.
Whether it's called latency or bigbopplehoopledinger ... trust me... I've used Cubase enough to know from the guys description that all he has to do is select the right monitoring option and he won't have a delay anymore.

Sounds good to me !!

Yay! I win!! :D

and your prize it knowing Im cleverer than you !!

No go buy a computer that runs on mains electricity (and not coal) and a set of monitors so that you can hear when your vocals are flat !!!

My vocals aren't flat.
Maybe your ears are just too sharp from using Windows computers for so long that they've distorted your ability to judge real talent because of all the time you've spent figuring out which .dos extension isn't working right.

thhhhhppppppptttttttt!!!!!!!!!
poo head.

Oh Im much worse than that !!!

Besides I no longer own any windows computer !!

I do like my new G5 though, it look nice next to Catherine's iMac and my G4 powerbook !

Thhhhhpppppppttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have to say yes it is in fact a LATENCY issue. It usually happens when using dig. workstations and the like(thats why i love the old analog stuff,but i digress). its the time it takes to go thru the syst. and hearing it like he said try changing the settings on your monitoring path , any way good luck...Jeff