Latency problem?

I'm not having problems monitoring what I hear...its what gets recorded.

I can record a solo over a riff I just recorded in perfect time,but when played back its way out of time by the end of the tune.

The same with drum tracks...I make the drum track and record over it in perfect time,but about halfway through the song,my riffs are ahead of the drum track..???

Is this a latency problem?

Check out the size of your input buffer and reduce it if possible.
That should help.

If it doesn't the other way of solving the problem is to just re-align the various track. As long as they are all in time with each other at some level you should be OK.

Wow,I lowerd the buffer size and its takes close to a second for the signal to play back...its like a delay pedal!

I can increase it to where there is almost no latency,but the audio engine drops out a few seconds into recording(program crashes/stops basically).

Should I get a faster computer with more ram e.c.t?Currently ive got 256Mb ram and a 2.8 Ghz cpu.

Also,does it matter that i'm going direct into the sound card and not through a usb/firewire interface box?

even if I play it all in time and stuff,by the end its always almost a beat ahead of my previous track.

Well the other thing those buffers effect is the number if tracks that can play back at once. So rather than massively reduce them to alter you latency you could just record stuff and re-align it after. This also means that you don't have to spring for a new computer.

As far as fire wire vs sound card, well it depends on what you want to do an how good the ADCs are in what ever you are using. Either way I don't think the problem is with the interface but rather with the system / software / its configuration.

However springing for some more RAM is never a bad idea

What program are you using to record and what operating system and sound card. If your using win 98 make sure to have your DMA turned on for your hard drives, this wont help latency but this will improve overall performance greatly. Also if you are using Pro Tools there is a "low latency" monitoring option.

Also are your drum parts midi? You could be having midi drift, which is a pain.

May be use better ASIO 24/96 sound card? non-usb