Recording WITH EFFECTS and WITHOUT LATENCY in Cakewalk by Bandlab

[Creative Sauce]

Hi folks! If you want a simple trick to have latency free recording, with FX, but no special hardware - check out my video. I show you how to do it in Cakewalk by Bandlab, but this could be applied to other DAWs

WATCH HERE: https://youtu.be/-huBF5lrqRM

[Jim Fogle]

Mike,

 

Thanks for showing two ways to achieve the same result.

[Jim Roseberry]

The OP is combining hardware-based (dry signal) and software-based (100% wet signal) monitoring.

 

To clarify, the 100% wet signal *is* subject to round-trip latency... but in the case of Reverb, you probably won't notice a few extra milliseconds of "pre delay".

ie:  At 44.1k using a 64-sample ASIO buffer size, round-trip latency for many audio interfaces is ~5ms.

The 100% wet Reverb signal is subject to that ~5ms latency... but (again) you most likely won't notice it... as it sounds like you dialed in an additional 5ms of "pre-delay".

 

For those not familiar, Pre-Delay is a preset amount of time... before the reverb decay happens.

Adding some pre-delay allows transients to come thru clean/clear... as they're not immediately masked by the reverb.

[sadicus]

So the idea is that the Latency still exists but the reverb blends it together so it's not noticeable?
Pre-Delay is something I just learned about and is so important for Recording Classical guitar, getting the transients.

[Jim Roseberry]

10 minutes ago, sadicus said:

So the idea is that the Latency still exists but the reverb blends it together so it's not noticeable?
Pre-Delay is something I just learned about and is so important for Recording Classical guitar, getting the transients.

The OP's video shows how you can combine two sources of monitoring

• Direct from the audio interface - dry signal (near zero latency)
• Signal processed thru DAW (in this case with reverb set 100% wet)

You need the DAW processed signal to be 100% wet (no dry signal).

If the reverb contained any dry signal, it would cause comb-filtering (unwanted phasing/chorusing).

• The signal direct from the audio interface is near zero latency.
• The signal processed thru the DAW is subject to ~5ms round-trip latency.

Had the Reverb contained any dry signal, it would be mixing dry vocal back in... but delayed by ~5ms.

By keeping the Reverb signal 100% wet, only the reverb is subject to the ~5ms round-trip latency.

• Dry vocal = near zero latency
• Reverb = ~5ms latency

In real physical spaces it often takes a few ms for the reverb (ambience) to reach your ears.

Thus, that ~5ms latency (in this example) wouldn't sound unnatural. 

[Jim Roseberry]

If you were running your audio interface at much higher buffer size... and/or using latent plugins in the project (especially in series), the latency can become much higher (and could get to the point were it sounds unnatural).

That's why I brought this up.

If you understand the concepts behind it, you can avoid (latency related) pitfalls.   

[John Vere]

Older thread but I just found this while looking at all the tutorials 

I discovered a similar trick one day when a client asked if I could add a little bit of reverb while they tracked. I had just changed my set u and didn’t want to re patch everything so I simply put input echo on, set the send to the reverb bus on pre fader and turned down the track fader. The reverb came through the back end with the tiny bit of slap back delay which actually sounded good.