Latency... Even with a Mixer?

[Loudnoize Ent.]

Hey Guys, Should I be experiencing latency even if I monitor through a mixer? If not, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong. I have the MBox. Maybe I need to check something on/off? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Chris

[dans]

If you're monitoring through your mixer, the will be no latency (at least none that most humans can hear). If, however, you are hearing both the direct signal and the signal from the outputs of the Mbox mixed together, then you will hear a phasing kind of sound. Can you describe your signal path and the symptoms a little better?

[Loudnoize Ent.]

Well for example, I'll have a guitar plugged into a preamp, then a compressor and then into a mixer input. The subgroup of that input will go into the Mbox. The output of the Mbox is routed back into 2 other mixer input channels. Seems to be a fairly easy setup. I was once told to mute the recorded channel in PT when recording. Is this neccesary when using a mixer? I understand when using Audio Instruments, I probably will need to buffer it down to 256 but for external devices using a mixer doesn't make sense to me. Any advice?

Thanks, Chris

[dans]

The import detail you are leaving out: where are your headphones plugged in? Assuming they are in the mixer, which would be the right way to do it, then you must mute the recorded channels in PTLE. Otherwise, you'll hear both their direct signal from the mixer and the latent signal from the Mbox. That's bad and sounds like crud. Also, be careful of feedback loops. Every now and then I'll be patching things through different busses and all of a sudden, I get a crazy loud feedback loop because I've routed the output of my 001 back into the input of a record-enabled, non-muted track.

[Loudnoize Ent.]

Hey dans, Well my phones are plugged into the mixer. I guess what you're saying is no matter what I do, there will always be latency, mixer or not. I've just been so use to DP and Cue Mix. Tell me, how should I have the Mix knob on the Mbox placed while monitoring through a mixer... left towards input, playback or around 12 o'clock?

Thanks. CL

[dans]

I don't have the Mbox so I'm not sure about that. But if you monitor through your mixer, there should be no latency of the source you are recording.

[auxsend1]

You need to put the mix knob somewhere in between and be sure to mute the track that you're currently recording to. That's the trick.

[Guerrilla Tech]

You need to set up your signal path on your mixer so that you are sending your input signal to the MBox AND your stereo out. Mute the recorded channels in protools so that you don't hear them in your Mbox out channels. This way you are listening to the input to your MBox, before any latency happens.