Track Echo Latency

[John Vere]

I agree with what CJ is telling you. Working with a DAW requires an ASIO audio interface-Period.  Any other driver mode will cause issues when overdubbing new tracks. You can use an onboard sound card for listening, editing and even recording a live band but not for tracking overdubs. 

There are many ways to configure your set up to have more than one mix.

1-Many interfaces offer 2 headphone jacks. Example the Scarlett 6i6 like I have has 2 headphone jacks and you use Mix Control to make 2 mixes.  This is why I always advise people to make a list of features you might need before purchasing an audio interface. It's cheaper to have the feature built in than to add it after the fact. 

2-A small mixer added to your output. This is what I actually use as I like to add some reverb to the headphones for some clients. My Mackie Pro FX 4 cost me $50 second hand. The client gets the mixer and I use the jack on my interface. 

3-A headphone amp with levels for each output. 

4- A $5 Y cable also works just fine as long as the headphones are similar in impedance. 

 

[Glenn Stanton]

i'm using an inexpensive Behringer Q802USB mixer - stereo USB (@41K sample rate 😞) (the Q1002USB (more $) has a 48K sample rate 🙂) and I use the Steinberg low-latency ASIO drive that came with the free version of the Cubase 10 program (it's much nicer than the ASIO4ALL and some other ASIO programs in terms of reliability). it's about 10ms latency (20ms round trip) (adjustable up to 100ms), but with PDC enabled during record or simply monitoring via mixer the instrument live against the playing tracks/metronome, then shifting the track to match, it seems to be working ok, and the mixer was only $80 USD or so (and includes decent preamps + channel compression on 2 XLR ins, plus 2 stereo more line level etc inputs) so it's a reasonable compromise on audio I/O. 

[scook]

16 minutes ago, fossile said:

I use the Steinberg low-latency ASIO drive that came with the free version of the Cubase 10 program (it's much nicer than the ASIO4ALL and some other ASIO programs in terms of reliability). it's about 10ms latency

All generic ASIO "drivers" are nothing more than wrappers for existing Windows drivers. Several are based on ASIO4All. They all perform about the same and introduce the same headaches when installed alongside real ASIO drivers.

There is no reason to bother with interfaces that lack a well written manufacturer supplied ASIO driver.

[Glenn Stanton]

18 hours ago, scook said:

All generic ASIO "drivers" are nothing more than wrappers for existing Windows drivers. Several are based on ASIO4All. They all perform about the same and introduce the same headaches when installed alongside real ASIO drivers.

There is no reason to bother with interfaces that lack a well written manufacturer supplied ASIO driver.

that is possible, however, after trying both the manufacturer "ASIO" drivers, a number of free ones, ASIO4ALL, etc, this one seems to be working well - very stable in performance, decently low latency (lower than my WASAPI, WDM, and MME). even my Musescore IO settings like it, and the Musescore IO doesn't like anything that has to do with audio output 🙂 so i removed all the other ones and have been using it exclusively for all things audio (disabled my normal audio drivers as well) for about 1 month now.

i do agree though, that my home desktop machine with the specific UMC drivers, outperforms the generic drivers because i can get the latency down to 2ms (with the caveat that it's a terrible price on CPU - so i keep it around 5ms when recording) with my UMC1820 - all 8 tracks at one.