Latency while playing guitar

#1

Hello guys,

I am beginer in home recording and i have some annoying issue.
When I play a string on my guitar, i hear it for example 0.25 seconds later in my headphones.
I am using Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD sound card and Ardour 5 software.

Thank you very much for help.

PS: Please don´t care about my english :smiley:

EDIT: I am using OS Windows

#2

If you can use the direct monitoring of the 404, that would be the best solution. Of course you would then hear your guitar “raw” without any effects you may have added to the channel, but there would be no delay and when you play back your recording it would be in time. If you must monitor from Ardour, you would want to try setting your buffer size (Window->Audio/MIDI Setup) to a lower number. The default is 1024 and most USB audio devices can be set to 256 or lower. You might try 256 and see how it sounds to you. If it is still laggy, try 128 or 64. You will know you have gone too low for your device or system if you start getting xruns.

#3

On GNU/Linux 256 fpp and lower (@48kHz) usually requires a realtime-kernel. Likewise on Windows, a latency of 5ms or less usually requires tweaking the system.

Also prefer 3 periods per cycle for USB devices (see https://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=10707)

around 10ms total round-trip latency should be sufficient for playing guitar. That corresponds to about 3.40m of sound in air. Not uncommon for guitarists in front of an amp on stage.

#4

Thanks a lot!
But when I use direct monitoring of the 404HD i can´t hear metronome. How to solve this?

#5

The metronome output is listed in the “Ardour Misc.” tab in the Audio Connections menu. Make sure it it’s output is the jack you are using for your headphones.