Any experience with these two USB Audio Interfaces

[JoviEaglesGarthBandR]

I have cakewalk music creator 5 and I use the Behringer UCG 102 to plug my instruments into my computer. However, when I use the Behringer interface it doesn't record great. I believe the term is latency where I will be playing something to a computer generated drum track but when I play it back it is off by 3/4 of a second or so. This means I can not use the instrument tracks meaning I have to play all the instruments which I do not know how to play so my guitar work might be perfect but it sounds horrible with the sloppy drums in the back and bass note driven bass. So here is my question has anyone used that and had the same problem or is it my computer. Also if it is the Behringer does anybody have any experience with the Cakewalk UA-1g it is more expensive and created by the same people who made my software so maybe it will be better and I will be able to just use computer generated instruments and add my guitars on top of it to make it sound like it belongs on a cd. Please let me know. Thanks

[Newysurfer]

Jovi - upgrade your recording system if you can afford it.
I use Sonar 8 Studio as my DAW and have two soundcards. Even my cheapo internal Soundblaster Xi-Fi Xtreme Music soundcard gives 4 milliseconds latency which I cannot notice and sounds decent but I've just upgraded to this M-Audio Fast Track Ultra.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackUltra.html

This external interface really improves things. Latency is now 1 ms and recordings are much better. Can record 6 tracks similtaneously.
Has preamps available on 4 tracks etc etc....... costs around $300 on ebay.

On your existing interface. Are you using ASIO drivers. These have faster latency than WMD. If you can't get faster latency out of the Behringer thing with some tweaking then it's really a sub-standard unit that you should ditch IMO.

[JoviEaglesGarthBandR]

well i can't upgrade recording software nor can I afford to pay 300 dollars for an interface. My question is will upgrading from the behringer to the cakewalk interfacemake a difference? or is it just my recording software, or both. Anybody with experience with these products please chime in. Thanks

[orcatraz]

Jovi,
is your computer fast enough for you to lower your audio buffer to say, 256? It's probably set for 1024 right now as that seems to be the common default setting in DAWs. Unfortunately, I don't know how you would do this in Cakewalk so you'll have to consult your manual. Another option is to not monitor your guitar or whatever through the computer's audio system. For this to work, you'll have to be using a mixer and set the DAW so that it does not pass the incoming audio through to the outputs - only the previously recorded audio will be heard. Again, read the manual on how to do that. Thus, you will be monitoring your inputs directly through your mixer and have virtually no latency at all. The disadvantage to this method is that you cannot use any of the computer's effects on the incoming signal and if you're using a modeler, any effects being used on the patch will also be recorded and can't be removed after it's been recorded. It would be best to turn off any effects being used and record as dry a signal as possible so that you can add or remove effects at will during mixdown.

O.

[Newysurfer]

well i can't upgrade recording software nor can I afford to pay 300 dollars for an interface. My question is will upgrading from the behringer to the cakewalk interfacemake a difference? or is it just my recording software, or both. Anybody with experience with these products please chime in. Thanks


Geez Mr Jovi - check the specs on these things. All your performance issues are caused by the relationship of your computer processing power, your DAW and your soundcard capabilities. If any one of those causes a bottleneck upgrading another part probably won't improve things. They work in combination.

For example, to install the new M-Audio Interface I got I had to upgrade from Windows XP to Win 7 last week. I have Cakewalk Sonar SE 8.3.1 which allows 256 audio buffer, I use ASIO drivers and the M-Audio Interface allows almost zero latency with this. All the pieces have to be in place for it to work though.

[JoviEaglesGarthBandR]

Srry for not getting back sooner but I had a family emergency. Ok here is the deal I will tell you exactly what I did. On my laptop I have changed between MME and WDM/KS and messed with the latency with the interface and it is not good enough. I also used like a cheap usb microphone with both of those and same thing it is off enough to notice. I tried ASIO but when I go to record it won't play anything because the playback is supposedly through the interface but the headphones have never worked with it. I tried it on my personal computer but I can't get it to recognize the interface so I do not know if it works on there. However, when I took the usb microphone and just recorded a simple riff and then recorded the same thing over it on the PC it was perfect with the usb microphone. When I did the exact same thing on my laptop it was off. To add the sound card on my laptop is a conextant thing that came with it. On my pc I upgraded a few years ago to a sound blaster 24. But is it the sound card, the interface, or both. I do not know about interface because it won't work on my pc. So what should I do, get the sound card and go from there? Thanks

[gumtown]

I think there might be an issue using the MME and WDM drivers, they do not provide good latency timing.
Try installing this
http://www.asio4all.com/

it has worked well for many people, and set you D.A.W input/output to ASIO4ALL, then in the asio4all control panel, select the Spanner icon for advanced mode, and set which devices you want to record, and which devices to playback.