Are you using ASIO drivers?

IIRs wrote: Are you using ASIO drivers?

I don't think I do; I can't find reference to that term anywhere in any of the settings.

The Dell XPS 1710 has a garbage sound card but when I plug in the Multimix 8USB is describes the sound card as "5- USB Audio Codec" so I'm led to believe that the mixer has an internal sound card.

Can I acquire ASIO drivers with this setup or would it require buying a new mixer (which I would do at the drop of a hat if it fixed the problem)

I've been looking into ASIO drivers for Vista. Is there a defacto choice of ASIO driver for Vista? Is it expected that money will be payed for such a driver or can they be had for free?

Which version of Audition? I use 3 and used to use 2. One of my sound cards is the Onyx 1640. Your latency shouldn't vary at all unless you change it in the hardware setup. If you are getting dropouts that is another issue entirely. I would recommend setting the monitor option to "external" to help keep yourself from chasing the delay.

Once your track is recorded you can nudge it in the multitrack view by either grabbing it with the appropriate tool or by right clicking and adjusting the track the amount of milliseconds necessary.

You said Mackie Multimix? Did you mean Alesis?

At any rate, Audition doesn't provide you with audio drivers. That is going to be the sound card manufacturer-in your case Alesis. There are a couple of universal drivers such as Asio4All but this sounds more like a user setting issue.

BTW: ASIO drivers are entirely dependent on the device, and that ASIO4ALL which was mentioned is simply an abstracted hack of a driver which works with most consumer level (i.e. onboard) soundcards - but it's not ideal.

The drivers will be available for free on the website of the company that makes it (unless you bought some junk from a no-name Chinese company).

Codemonkey wrote: that ASIO4ALL which was mentioned is simply an abstracted hack of a driver which works with most consumer level (i.e. onboard) soundcards - but it's not ideal.

Agreed. Sometimes though it's worth a shot on an untweaked OS for the consumer end gear.

If I had to throw a rock at it, I would first think that USB with the aid of Vista os and many things going on in the background of said os, is more the issue than anything.

How do you strip down Vista? Many things have to be monitored in order to get that Vista long arm of the control freak law OS from sticking it's hand into your life.

But there are simple things that work across the board.

Desktop graphics, internet connections, screensavers, virus software, these things should be stopped. Many find that using an external hard drive can make a difference. Problem with doing this is the cheaper ones are often USB based.

USB is OK for simple things like mice, keyboards and peripherals. But when you start mixing major components of an audio/video set up with USB problems begin.

It is the difference between host based(USB) and peer-to-peer(Firewire) where USB is defendant on the computer to tell it what, when and how to do what it is doing, against firewire that can talk to other components with out aid of a host.

The ASIO drivers should have been supplied on an install CD with your interface. Its usually worth checking the manufacturer's website for updated versions however.

Once you have the drivers installed you need to tell Audition to use them... I can't tell you how to do that as I use different software: look for an audio settings page of some kind.

I use Audition 1.5 at the moment, mostly because most of my projects are there already and I'm familiar with it. It apears that 1.5 doesn't support ASIO.

I've come to a happy medium of nudging the tracks forward to line up the drum strikes with the beat ticks. It's not perfect but it's much better. It varies from take to take, shorter takes are less latent, so it's some work but atleast I'm getting an acceptable result out the other end.

I'll do future projects in Audition 2 or 3.

I really appreciate the help. I had no idea was ASIO was until now.

If you are a student or teacher, the educational version of 2 or 3 is quite reasonable and I highly recommend it. The learning curve would of course be pretty small since you are already familiar with 1.5.

Landru wrote: ...I recorded myself tapping along to Adboe Audition's metronome and upon playback I discovered that the tapping is out of sync with the metronome to varrying degrees as playback progresses.....

It would be good to eliminate the possibility that the problem is your tapping rather than the latency. Record the metronome directly, not your tapping.

This reminds me of one of my first big pro orchestra auditions many years ago. This was in Chicago and the committee was half way out in the hall behind a screen.

I started a standard excerpt and heard a tap from someone on the committee to see whether I was keeping good time. Well, in my inexperience I followed the tap. The tap seemed to change so I adjusted again. It seemed despite my knowledge of reverb and acoustics (rudimentary at the time) I was adjusting to something that was happening at least a second before the sound reached my ears-chasing my tail so to speak. Oops. My teacher who was principal in the orch both kicked my ass at my next lesson and nearly fell out of his chair laughing at his hayseed student.

From what u are saying it sounds like you need to enable drift correction. Its pretty simple.
Go to options
Settings
Under the multitrack tab u will see a little white box
With the words correct for drift in recordings.
Check that box and save..
Your problem should be solved..