The Audio Interface Thread!

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Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

MrSargent posted:

Ahh I see. So I am still a little confused on what my best option would be. Should I just keep doing what I am doing by recording each element individually using the same audio track? I basically set up a pattern with all of my elements, then I record each individual one by muting all of the others on the TR-8.

I've never gotten asio4all to do anything beneficial for me, but don't let my attitude of hating it because it's "improper" or somesuch stand in your way. If it doesn't work out you can simply uninstall it. There aren't a lot of other options, apart from spending large wads of cash, changing your musical process or caring less about what gets recorded separately.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2017 22:47

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Wow, I'd been automatically dismissing all Behringer interfaces because they stopped providing ASIO drivers, but that appears to only have happened to the most basic models. Looks cheap for what you get then.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2017 14:23

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

You might want to get a midi cable if you don't have one yet. And a fuse for that speaker. Otherwise you're set, I think.

Cakewalk Music Producer seems very limited, but that's up to you. It should be enough for a proof-of-concept setup at the very least. You'll find out if you want more if you get there.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 23:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

fartzone_42069 posted:

But nothing yet about monitoring/recording live MIDI drums.

Input Echo button seems to be what they call it. On each track, the button to the right of the record enable button.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 03:50

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

fartzone_42069 posted:

I did however get monitoring (but no metronome in headphones still) when setting
Output: Cakewalk TTS1- 1

Unfortunately, there was way too much latency for that to be viable, and still no metronome.

If you're sure that you have installed the ASIO drivers from the Behringer website and have set this setting here to ASIO:

Then make us a screenshot showing what's available under playback devices.

fartzone_42069 posted:

When I do Input: UMCetc... MIDI channel 10 (where MIDI drums are always set by default, and where my elec drums are also set on it's brain) I've also tried "MIDI omni, etc."
And Output: UMCetc... MIDI Out.

Does your drum brain have a separate midi in port, and is there a cable between the midi out of the audio interface and that midi in port? If no on any of this, this track setting will not produce sound. You need to point that track output to something that can produce sounds, like a plugin or built in drum kit or whatever Cakewalk has for that.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 22:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Plavski posted:

I can say that as a user of the Behringer audio interface drivers - use the Asio4all drivers instead. They are WAY better.

Since this Cakewalk thing might support wasapi directly (ie. if that screenshot I got from google is a correct one), that would be a needless complication in this case.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 22:22

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

fartzone_42069 posted:

So are you saying, to live monitor, my drum brain would need another MIDI cable going MIDI In? The Behringer has two ports, a MIDI In and MIDI Out. So, am I boned, barring I get a new drum brain that has MIDI In and Out?

Not boned. Just ignore the Behringer's midi out port since you've got nothing to connect it to.

A. drum pads --> midi --> midi track --> software instrument --> drum sounds --> headphones

In this scenario we ignore the sounds the drum brain produces and monitor the sound the software instrument produces.

B. drum pads --> midi --> midi track AND drum brain --> drum sounds --> audio track --> drum sounds --> headphones

In this scenario we have an audio track just for the purpose of monitoring the sound the drum brain produces while we're recording the midi notes. For some reason. We will point the midi notes we recorded to a software instrument later.

Scenario B allows you to record the sound of the drum brain as well, but then you could do that before all this as well. If the point was to specifically use sounds the drum brain produces, well, nothing was gained by the venture into midi, because the drum brain doesn't have a midi in.

The good news is that scenario A makes a lot of sense and is what anyone in your position, looking to expand their sound palette and editing possibilities should be looking at anyway.

So, yeah, the Windows 10 drivers is what I mean by the ASIO drivers, so they are installed and are what's showing in that screenshot.

I think you have to go to the basics and load an existing audio file onto an audio track and see if with either of UMC asio driver out 1 or 3 you can get that to play in your headphones. If that doesn't work, something really isn't working as it should. Feel free to try out whatever's under wasapi as well. We want either of these driver modes specifically in order to get very low latency. Anything else that works otherwise won't get us there.

I see the word metronome in that config panel (down left in project settings); maybe it has a separate audio output setting for just that there, which could explain it not being heard whenever you succeed in getting other sound coming out. Take a peek.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 01:44

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Set the metronome to audio metronome/master, this will prevent the metronome not sounding from being a separate issue. That's the safe setting. If it's not working, then I haven't got a clue where else to look. Worst case you create another midi or audio track with your own metronome sound on it.

fartzone_42069 posted:

I switched the Output from the Behringer to Cakewalk TTS1-1, it's the only other option besides Drum Map Manager.

So TTS1 is the built in soft synth of Cakewalk. That should be good for starters. Particularly if you can make it make sound.

fartzone_42069 posted:

Basically, if I want to do this latency-free, headphones with project metronome monitoring, I need a drum brain that has a MIDI In, not just a MIDI Out?

That still wouldn't offer you a true latency free option without additional hardware to get the metronome included. What we're shooting for is a low latency option where the latency is so low it doesn't bother you because you legitimately shouldn't be able to notice it. On paper, for scenario A, this is achievable with what you've got.

For scenario A, the only job the drum brain has to do is translate pad triggers into midi information and send it out to your computer. We're not interested in the sounds it can produce in any way. For that a midi out only is enough.

The point I think we're at is that you go back to preferences - audio - devices, click the asio panel button, go to buffer settings and set the asio buffer size to the lowest number available. Ok those settings and test by playing something on the pads. Latency should be a lot better now. If sound is crackling or breaking up, the computer can't keep up and you'll have to go back to the asio panel and try a slightly higher buffer size, until you find a setting that works. Ideally this isn't necessary though. The best setting may vary on how heavy your particular project is on the computer's cpu, so you may have to visit that panel again in the future. I expect you probably can keep the buffer size at 256 samples or below and be good for latencies lower than 10ms.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 03:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Well you're sort of dead-ended in that very limited Music Creator edition. With Gibson killing off Sonar, your experience with this Cakewalk product doesn't even allow you to naturally carry over what you've learned to a full-fledged DAW. It's not crazy to limit investing in getting this working right sooner than later, even though I'm sure snap-to or quantize settings could be figured out eventually, with enough effort.

You've got a good reason to prefer Garageband, which is that you've got a friend that can help you out with it. That is a no poo poo good argument for buying some Apple product to give you access to that. If money is no object, sure, why the hell not.

On the other hand it would cost you nothing to give the Reaper trial a shot for a while. It's not the most intuitive software, but it's powerful and there is a lot of stuff on Youtube of how to do the basics in it. There are also people in some of the threads here in the Musician's Lounge that actually use it. It doesn't have drum kit sounds included afaik, so that would mean figuring out vst plugins first thing. It really depends on how confident you are starting again from scratch on something that too will be nothing like your old Cakewalk Pro and doesn't do staff music notation either.

As was mentioned somewhere before, there is very capable music notation software that has DAW-like capabilities tacked on to it for Windows. Conceptually, I think they would be a good fit for you. In theory. But a license would probably cost a couple of hundred bucks on its own and it'd be hard to find other people familiar with them as they are a niche product.

Again, I don't think a new drum brain will get you where you want. I'd be more confident in the Reaper recommendation if you had taken as a duck to water to the modern paradigm of a DAW, mostly present in Cakewalk Music Creator, so far. No offense. Talk you out of a Mac mini? I don't know. It's costly and it feels very wrong telling you to bypass a perfectly good computer you already own. Otherwise it doesn't seem to have a lot going against it.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 15:12

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It's good to know you got to a point where you can have fun with it!

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 15:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Pondex posted:

I just found a used Akai EIE pro for sale really cheap. Like new and 25% the price of a new one.

Is that a good choice for a beginner?

ricecult posted:

I have the Akai EIE Pro, I'm not sure I can recommend it. It's a cool design with a lot of useful features (the monitoring knob is super useful while tracking), but I get noise from it, it's not built as sturdy as advertised, and while I haven't had this problem, a lot of people find it unusable because the drivers are glitchy. That said, I've had mine for a few years and managed to do some cool stuff with it, but I am also in the same boat of looking for something new with more ins/outs.

peter gabriel posted:

Trip report update:

DO NOT BUY AN AKAI EIE PRO

The thing is great but randomly I get this thing where all audio coming out of it sounds 'bitcrushed'

You can here it from about 35 seconds into this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18rs37g-ajU

Akai are basically all 'welp sucks to be you' about this, and it's a common issue:

http://community.akaipro.com/akai_p...on-from-outputs

So sadly I have to advise against getting one, it is great until it does this and then it just, well, it's poo poo.

Radiapathy posted:

The biggest liability with Akai (and their sister brands, Alesis and M-Audio) right now is support. They do not fix bugs and they do not solve problems.

I had been looking at the new Akai keyboard controllers, but my experience with the buggy software that came with my Alesis V-25, and the laughably bad support I got when looking for answers/workarounds made me wary of anything they produce.

If the EIEs were reliable (I have heard complaints about driver stability elsewhere) they would be one of the best values on the market, so it is a shame.

hitchensgoespop posted:

Anyone one used one of these AKAI EIEs?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...&pf_rd_i=468294

The reviews are terrible via Amazon but some of the online reviews have been pretty good.

Im looking for a replacement for my DMX 6fire which has served me pretty well but the lack of official Win7 support has sadly killed it.

My requirements are pretty slim, i just want something that can take a mic or midi keyboard at reasonable quality and output to some monitor speakers.

Weird BIAS posted:

I got one of the red models and it starts humming when you turn phantom power on both channels.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2018 17:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

To be completely fair, there has surprisingly been more than one firmware update and driver update since those comments. I have no idea if that will make any difference at all though. Confidence in current day Akai is low.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2018 20:50

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Look into the Zoom R16. Though even eq requires some menu diving.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2018 21:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Mister Speaker posted:

Quick S/P-DIF question: I have a FocusRite Scarlett 18i20, and a DJM900 mixer. In an effort to free up the analog inputs on the Scarlett, I've connected the DJM via S/P-DIF. The Scarlett doesn't seem to be hearing the mixer. I'm pretty sure I've done this before successfully, but can't figure out why it's not hearing it today. Any ideas? Thanks for your time.

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207547365-How-do-I-use-the-S-PDIF-inputs-and-outputs-on-my-Focusrite-interface-

That link has a step by step halfway down the page for the Scarlett side of things, with a couple of things to verify for the mixer, like sample rate and internal clock.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2019 22:22

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

What do you want to achieve?

# ¿ Aug 27, 2019 14:11

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

PoizenJam posted:

Exclusive use of the Scarlett is required for Rocksmith to function properly (i.e. with minimal latency). This means the Scarlett cannot be used for PC audio while Rocksmith is running, and also cannot act as the main sound interface for OBS.

This isn't true for either of my audio interfaces. (I have a Roland Quad-Capture and a Native Instruments Traktor Audio 2.) That is to say, ASIO use doesn't mean it can't be used for PC audio and/or regular use at the same time. For some devices you need to set the sample rate for pc audio use to the same value as you're using for your asio software for it to work. Like, I honestly don't know if it is just a quirk of the Scarlett to not allow you to do that, but it's not an inherent restriction of the technology.

Having an interface that can do this, would simplify your cabling. Especially if the interface also has a loopback feature or digital in/out you can use for that.

Unless I'm missing something here.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2019 17:41

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Set the Scarlett's settings to match that, in the panel of the type below:

Don't know if it will work, but it costs nothing to try.

e: that's a Windows settings panel

e2: inserted a comma to clarify

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Aug 27, 2019

# ¿ Aug 27, 2019 19:42

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I would not be worried at all about damaging the interface with that setup. I don't really see how.

I've put my monitors on a dumb remote controlled power outlet, which reduced the thumping on power on significantly, coming from a manual switch. I think it's just the speed and the decisiveness with which the relay changes states leaves less time for arcing. My best guess. Anyway, recommended.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2019 20:37

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The preamp you bought is going to output at line level, as that generally is the point of preamps. You should set the switch on your interface to line.

It's unclear what the switch does precisely, but it might allow for instruments that require high impedance (hi-z) like guitars to be connected. This isn't your use case.

It's not likely that the preamps on the interface will be bypassed entirely in a technical sense, but the signal you'll be feeding through them will be so strong that it shouldn't matter.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2019 18:59

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Well sure, interfaces with line inputs (often in addition to the mic inputs) are numerous. I'm not sure I would be able to pick out the difference in a double blind test though. A preamp that doesn't have to do any work has little opportunity to imprint any character or noise as far as I understand. Can't honestly say I've had the opportunity to actually test it.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2019 20:22

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

chippy posted:

I'm a bit confused about this talk of some interfaces having better latency. When I've asked in the past (in various places, not casting blame on here!) about which interfaces have the best latency I've generally been told that it's down to how small your CPU allows you to have your buffer, not the interface itself. Is this not the case? Or is it down to how efficient the drivers are or something?

Driver efficiency is a major thing. Just look at this image from earlier in the thread where interfaces from different manufacturers are tested on the same computer with the same buffer size. Last column is round trip latency (in+out).

Radiapathy posted:

Note that the Scarlett here was on the old driver, which was terrible latency-wise. It's supposed to be more middle of the pack now.

Latency still goes up if your cpu forces you to choose a larger buffer size, obviously.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2019 18:42

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

What you need is a DI box. There are interfaces with the functionality built in, but you might as well get a separate one as they are not necessarily expensive and open you up to using them in other contexts.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2019 18:31

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

nitsuga posted:

Edit: I am a little confused though. The Behringer does have a Hi-Z input and that�s what I�m using. With that, should I still need a DI box?

Huh. I did check the product page at the time and still came away with the idea we were talking about a model with two mic preamps and no hi-z switch somehow. Looking at the pictures it's pretty obviously not the case. I'm sorry about that.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2019 23:51

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The interface has its own power brick, is that right?

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 21:38

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

If the hub and the current dongle work for other USB devices, then I've got nothing.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2020 22:46

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jonny 290 posted:

I'm thinking of picking up a Traktor Audio 2 interface before the end of month as it comes with Guitar Rig free right now and I need something more modern than this old M-audio box I picked up from the thrift store - anybody have a ballpark of what latency I can expect on a 2015 Macbook pro at 24/96 (or 24/192?) "Playable" is totally fine.

The thing has no inputs, just saying in case. If you're talking the midi keyboard to softsynth to audio out type of latency, it did sub 5ms easily on my atom Windows tablet at 48kHz four or five years ago. It should do that easily or better on an actual computer at a higher sample rate, even at that age.

# ¿ May 12, 2020 19:28

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The mic might have a tip-ring-sleeve jack to pretend it's stereo for convenience in consumer context, while the interface expects tip-ring-sleeve jacks to be for balanced signal purposes in professional context. If you use a size adapter that is tip-sleeve ("mono"), then it should work.

# ¿ May 13, 2020 18:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Wasn't sure on the impedance thing of electret mics.

# ¿ May 14, 2020 23:06

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Are you splitting the stereo signal from the Chromecast up into left and right before plugging it into the mixer?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 22:35

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Not a drummer, but I was always really impressed with my native instruments traktor audio 2, latency wise. Very solid driver. Picked that up for around $40 second hand. New price is a bit much for what it is though.

There are a couple of pre-owned ones on eBay.co.uk for seemingly reasonable money. Definitely look for second hand on whatever is the de facto marketplace for such things where you are (gumtree or some poo poo). Maybe you can score with local pickup, so you don't have to pay for shipping.

Provided the drumkit connects through usb anyway.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 18:51

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The midi i/o certainly doesn't need to be built into the audio interface to work properly. Dedicated midi interfaces with multiple in and outs do exist, even at a reasonable price point, like the miditech midiface. This will certainly prevent the situation where you're plugging multiple usb to midi cables into the machine running your DAW. Which I don't know would be an actual problem, but it doesn't seem neat either way.

For the standalone computers, I'd consider looking into midi over ip, if they're networked. I have no experience with this myself, but on paper this should do well.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2020 13:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

They suggest updating the usb 3 chipset drivers or disabling usb 3 in the BIOS altogether, which is, like, great.

In a desktop you can obviously add in a usb 2 card, should be cheap. On a laptop you could give interjecting a usb 2 hub a shot, but I'm not sure that'll do anything.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 22:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It has been a while since I tried running music software on anything that didn't have a proper asio driver, but that buffer size doesn't strike me as extraordinary for a situation like that. It seems a lot more likely to me that the driver used is poo poo than that a recent cpu like that is insufficient. Sure it's unworkable if you do any live input of anything whatsoever. But that wasn't indicated to be a problem they had :shrug:

Some people just mouse click everything in the piano roll.

Getting an audio interface with an asio driver will allow for significantly smaller buffer sizes, which will make everything more responsive, but obviously not because of the interface doing any processing or anything like that. Don't know if it's a thing that needs solving now that their projects play without hiccups. imo.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2020 12:52

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 07:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Radiapathy posted:

A question, though (not a fruityloops guy): How does FL Studio support ASIO in the absence of a physical interface? Do they have their own alternative to ASIO4ALL or something?

Yeah, there's an fl studio asio driver built in, that you've got to imagine works in a very similar way to asio4all. It's easier to find entirely uneducated discussion on which of them is best than proper documentation though.

I saw a screenshot where at 1024 samples it self reported 24ms of latency, which, if ballpark representative for real world use, isn't even all that unusable.

I remember on xp computers, I could never get latency below half a second without going with real asio drivers. I guess that was before wdm existed.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2020 00:45

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No More Drake > Musician's Lounge > The Audio Interface Thread!

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