Cannot Get Signal From Mixer to SAW!

[Bob L]

If you follow the post I placed here everything will be solved... notice it is all about the Tape-Style monitoring... and also notice that it tells you that in order to use this effectively, you will need to use the ASIO drivers for your soundcard in order to get low realtime latency (hence fix the delay you mention)... its all there, clearly explained.

Also... as mentioned by Dave, your earlier vesions of SAW could not have allowed any kind of direct monitoring... so... if you could hear your input signal, you must have been monitoring from some external mixer... or other hardware signal path to your speakers that did not monitor thru the SAW itself.

The difference with Studio is you do have the capability to monitor thru the software mixer using eq, compression, reverb etc... as long as you follow the details about achieving low latency with your soundcard drivers.

Bob L

[Tom M]

I think you guys may have missed the post in which I reported that Bob's instructions solved the problem. No need to hate on me anymore!

My problem now is that I have a big delay (maybe a full second) between a signal hitting the mixer and the signal reaching SAW. This is going to be a problem when I try to sync a live source with tracks already up on the mixer. Unless there is a quick fix, I will work on it on my own and report back.

Please keep in mind that, at this point, I am just short of a hobbyist with this stuff. I have a regular job and I only have a few audio projects each month. So SAW is not always open right in front of me. Just finding the time to play with it is quite a challenge. If I am asking too much of you guys with these questions, feel free to ignore them, or tell me to go away.

[Butch Bos]

You need the ASIO driver set to about 2-3 buffers and 64-128 size and you will have instant start stop

If you want you can call me my cell is 309 230 7061

Butch

[Bob L]

Tom... this delay issue was also covered in my message...

If your system is capable of low latency driver performance, you have other powerful options available to monitor directly within the SAWStudio virtual environment, with no need for external mixers or signal routing. These options require that your system and audio card drivers are capable of stable glitch-free performance with buffer settings of 3 x 128 or lower. 3 x 64 is a great choice for virtual realtime signal monitoring. The Out and In buffer sizes should be set the same. The In-buffer-count should be set to 4 or higher and will not add to the monitor latency. The Out-buffer-count does add to the monitor latency and should set as low as possible while still maintaining stable system operation. Only a few audio card drivers are capable of this performance using the MME driver model. Most will require you to use the ASIO driver model to approach these low latencies.

Bob L

[Ian Alexander]

I think you guys may have missed the post in which I reported that Bob's instructions solved the problem. No need to hate on me anymore!

My problem now is that I have a big delay (maybe a full second) between a signal hitting the mixer and the signal reaching SAW. This is going to be a problem when I try to sync a live source with tracks already up on the mixer. Unless there is a quick fix, I will work on it on my own and report back.

Please keep in mind that, at this point, I am just short of a hobbyist with this stuff. I have a regular job and I only have a few audio projects each month. So SAW is not always open right in front of me. Just finding the time to play with it is quite a challenge. If I am asking too much of you guys with these questions, feel free to ignore them, or tell me to go away.

Hey Tom, nobody's hating on you. You gave us some interesting problems and we want to solve them. Partly because we often learn things ourselves from these discussions. And partly because we want to be your heroes. We want to hear you say, "YES!" almost as much as you want to say it. So hang in there.

[Dave Labrecque]

Hey Tom, nobody's hating on you. You gave us some interesting problems and we want to solve them. Partly because we often learn things ourselves from these discussions. And partly because we want to be your heroes. We want to hear you say, "YES!" almost as much as you want to say it. So hang in there.

What Ian said, Tom. No hate, here. You'll have to excuse our (my) occasional sarcasm or facetiousness. All meant in fun.

I believe Bob is saying that if you follow the instructions laid out for you around here, you won't have that latency issue you're seeing. Should not be a problem to do what you need to do. SAWStudio's simultaneous-record-play (SRP) is meant to do this: play stuff back in perfect sync with input signals. This is required, of course, for any kind of overdubbing. You'll be fine once you get everything set right.

[Tom M]

OK, I can't begin to express how far I am in over my head on this one. Bob, I love your product and I am really grateful for your willingness to help, but to a recreational SAW user who has spent more than 20 years with SAWse, all this talk about latency and buffers is gobbledeygook to me. And the rest of you guys, I really appreciate your help, but I have to break down and admit that I don't know as much about the back-end of all this stuff as you might assume I do.

For example, it took me quite a while to figure out that the input/output buffer settings I needed to look at are not the ones in the "Audio Device Setup" dialogue, but in the "ASIO Device Setup" dialogue under "Audio Driver Model." Once I found my way there and poked around a little, I discovered a dialogue box for ASIO Driver Settings, set it to the highest level, and now the delay is minimal, albeit not gone completely. Here's a screenshot:



(If it doesn't appear above, my "forums" account probably doesn't support pics.)

Anyway, this seems to be the best my crappo sound card is going to deliver, so perhaps it's time to shop for something else?

[mr_es335]

Tom,

A really good friend of mine, who is a DJ, has used this device for years and he states that it just works and works very well.

The point is, this device should be able to do the job well for you.

Butch has offered to help you "over the phone", and if your system has Internet access, I can do a remote session with you, as I have done with others. This may help to resolve your issues.

PS: I am really NOT all that knowledgeable myself - at least not compared to many others on this forum.

[Tom M]

Just got some very-much-appreciated phone assistance from Butch, who threw some unwelcomed information about Windows 10 into the mix. Apparently, just as Apple manages to make all my IOS devices obsolete every couple of years, Microsoft has also figured out a way to design a Windows OS that works great for them, but crappy for us users. Looks like I either have to pay for a downgrade to Windows 7 or maybe pay some type of ransom to Microsoft to get them to free-up my system from whatever revenue-motivated monitoring in which they've ensnared a world of Windows 10 users.

Anyway, having readjusted my ASIO driver as described in my previous post, the input delay is minimal enough to live with. And I'm sure I can get used to the delay on the mouse, so I think I will mark this issue as "resolved" now. This is probably my last question (at least for a while), so thank you all for your help. It has been refreshing to discover that there are still people out there who are passionate about something.

Tom M

[RobertV]

Tom;
Have you tried the ASIO resolution set to 16 Bit? Unless you are doing something with unbelievable dynamic range that should be adequate.

Also, if you navigate to:

Options - Audio Device Setup :

That is where you set the number of buffers Sawstudio uses.

Set this to the smallest number you can get away with, starting with a larger number say 5 and reducing till Sawstudio is complaining and than increase the number to one more.
From memory (which is not the best) only the input buffer number adds to turnaround latency when live monitoring. Bob could clarify.
In the Behringer panel the buffer size appears reasonable, I found 64 works in my setup.

Note That with a small buffer size and low number of buffers, you are better of not to use any (VST) plugins.
You could eventually use two configurations, one for Recording / Live use with low latency and another setting with more buffers for when you want to use VST Plugins

Hope this helps...

Robert V.