Cubase SX - latency in recording

BossArky

Currently I use Cubase SX to record my music at home on a laptop (guitars, keyboard drums, keyboard bass, vocals).

When I lay down the drum track and then listen back to it through headphones and record something else everything is fine. However, the second track which is recorded is always 40 milli-seconds behind the drum track. Its no big deal.. I just drag the second track forward by 40 milliseconds and it is now in time.

Looking under the menu path: Devices --> Device Setup --> VST Multitrack

I see that the input latency is 325.079ms, and the output latency is 31.383ms. Why does this not equate to the 40ms which I seem to be experiencing?

Is this a problem with my laptops processing power?

Previously I have entered a latency offset but I still get out of time recordings.

Anyone else have this problem? As I said, I can get around it... but its a minor pain.

Anima

What ASIO drivers are you using? Whats your soundcard?

BossArky

DirectX Full Duplex driver and I have no idea what the soundcard is. My laptop is a Sony Vaio, apparently has an inbuilt soundcard... but googling it cannot find any definite info.

jtsuited

i was talking to someone the other day who had the exact same problem. it doesn't really make sense to me.did you email steinberg about it. They tend to be good. or at least were when i used cubase about 5 years ago.

Anima

DirectX Full Duplex driver

Yeah theres a lot of latency with that. Do you have any other drivers to pick from? You could try ASIO4ALL, should bring it down a fair bit.

cornbb

Yup, ASIO4ALL might help a bit. But the builtin soundcards with most laptops are ****e... I got a Creative Audigy 2 PCMCIA soundcard for about €110 for my laptop and it improved things greatly. Or if you wanna spend €200-€300 you could get a usb or firewire interface with half decent preamps and converters

mdreeling

I'd agree with cornbb, I find messing about drivers to enhance the vendor provided soundcard can be a major hassle, I used to have an SBLive with special drivers which brought latency down to about 11ms, but it turned out to be a waste of time, the drivers aren't super stable and cubase used to crap itself the whole time. Saving for a USB interface makes a lot of sense. I use an M-Audio Delta 44, which has never, ever, given me any jipp, and the latency is 6ms.

jtsuited

Yeah a usb solution is a really good idea. Soundcards are so fricking messy

The Boarder Man

As far as soundcards go, M-Audio and EMU are supposed to be good.