Overall Latency -- nothing happens?
My understanding of latency is that, if I'm recording vocals/guitar via a line-in, there will be some delay between my playing/singing and it registering with the computer; therefore, if the latency is really high, this means that the computer will think I sang a note slightly after I actually did. Upon playback, then, I'll be off-beat and will have to nudge my vocal track slightly earlier, in order to have my downbeats line up with the computer's timeline (and any other tracks that are on-beat). (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.)
I'm running my instruments through an audio interface so I don't really notice any latency -- it registers at 24ms through a Focusrite @ 512 samples. When I adjust the driver error compensation, though, I would expect it to affect something. Here's what happened:
+300ms overall latency: Recorded myself going "dut" on each eighth note. Playback is in-time.
-300ms overall latency: Reocrded myself going "dut" on each eighth note. Playback is in-time.
Shouldn't both of my vocal tracks be shifted slightly ahead of, or behind, the beat, when I intentionally set the overall latency so far off?
I'm asking here because I figure I must be wrong about something, and I don't know where my misunderstanding lies.
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Upon playback, then, I'll be off-beat and will have to nudge my vocal track slightly earlier, in order to have my downbeats line up with the computer's timeline (and any other tracks that are on-beat). (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.)
You’re wrong about that. The computer knows how much input latency there is and automatically records the new audio at the correct point in the timeline for when you played it while you were overdubbing. No need to nudge it afterwards.
There are at least two situations where latency can still be a factor. The first is where you are monitoring through the computer as you record. The problem there is round-trip latency. The computer can compensate for the input latency and place your audio in the correct spot, but the round trip latency means you pluck a string or press a key and there is a slight delay before you hear the sound. That often makes it heard for musicians to play comfortably and in time because the latency ruins the “hand ear coordination”.
The second situation is when you are playing audio out of the computer to a speaker or effect unit and then recording the results back in. In this case, you usually do have to nudge the audio back into place to compensate for the output latency, since the software usually doesn’t know that the output latency is a factor. I believe some DAWs have figured out how to deal with this also, but I’m not sure.
Also I recommend not messing with driver error compensation. It’s just as likely you’ll make things worse or have no effect. Set it back to automatic.
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