Old 02-15-2009, 03:09 PM   #1
Wulftone
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 12
Default Zoom H4 latency

Hi,

I'm having problems recording with my Zoom H4 in audio IO mode. The latency is way off, either mis-reporting it or.. I really don't know! In the meantime, I'm just moving items manually. If anyone has any ideas on how to get it recording in time, I'd be happy to hear them.

Thanks,
-Trevor
Wulftone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-16-2009, 12:04 AM   #2
excitron
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 125
Default

Does the H4 have ASIO drivers? That's a start. Click the numbers you see listed at the upper right of the Reaper screen, and it should take you to the audio device setup.

If you've installed ASIO drivers for the H4, select them under the AUDIO SYSTEM tab.

If you don't have ASIO drivers, try WDM drivers. Otherwise you could try the ASIO4ALL drivers and see if that helps:
http://www.asio4all.com/
excitron is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-16-2009, 12:38 AM   #3
dub3000
Human being with feelings
 
dub3000's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 3,955
Default

there are asio drivers for the h4, hit up google
dub3000 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-16-2009, 04:54 AM   #4
drillbit
Human being with feelings
 
drillbit's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Perth, Australia
Posts: 634
Default

I get about 6ms comfortably with my H2. It's not solid like my Line6 KB37 but it's usable. Brilliant recorder though, have you checked out the new H4N...now that's very gearlust worthy:

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2009/...4-track-to-go/
__________________
https://www.instagram.com/trilbyt/
https://ello.co/trilbyt/
trilbyt on Facebook
drillbit is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-16-2009, 06:36 AM   #5
Stealthxusa
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 27
Default I Feel Your Pain - But All Is Not Lost

I'm in process of putting together a live room demo recording of my band. Over the past month I've also gone through the whole Try-to-record-with-the-H4-at-low-latency thing. I've upgraded the firmware on the H-4 to the most current, as well have the most current drivers and Reaper software. My machine is no slouch either (Core 2 Quad Q9550, 8GB 1066 RAM, 2x 750GB + 1 TB hard drives on separate IDE controller Channels, NVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB Video Card, etc.).

Initially I too found that the only way to get H4 signal to Reaper was to record on the H4 then move the files in via USB.
Then I though to myself "do I really need for this to happen via USB/ASIO?" The normal analog line in on my sound card shows a noise floor of -92db on my soundmeter app. That's plenty quiet - especially for what we were trying to do. So I took the Lo-Fi road and made a 1/8-to-1/4 stereo cable out of Mogami stock I had lying around the studio, set the H4 to monitor line out, and took the signal from the H4 line out directly to my soundcard line in. Worked like a charm - no more moving files or adjusting playback rates due to different internal clocks (we work with a backing track for synths, bass and rhythm guitar, all of which I've already recorded, so everything needs to sync up to our drummer who's following the click).

I've just put up the first 2 mixed examples (2 cover tunes) on on my band website at http://www.midnightfalling.com if you want to have a listen.

Plus I have the added functionality of being able to record and monitor through my soundcard simultaneaously (generally one application cannot use multiple ASIO driver at once as far as I know).

Something you might want to try, anyway...
__________________
System 1: Win-7 SP1, Core i7-2600 3.40GHz, 16Gb Ram, Presonus 1818vsl, 4.5TB Storage on 4 drives ------- System 2: Win-XP/SP3,Core2 Quad Q9550 @2.83GHz,6GB RAM, Presonus Firestudio, 1.5TB Storage on 3 drives.
Stealthxusa is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-03-2009, 09:49 PM   #6
Wulftone
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 12
Default

Well, I've tried the ASIO drivers provided by Zoom, ASIO4ALL, WDM, and DirectX, and none of them solve the problem. Sometimes it works perfectly, other times it doesn't line up at all. I can move the files manually, but that's really obnoxious. You'd think that even a 10ms latency would work great through ASIO of any sort...

Thanks for the suggestion about using the H4 as simply a microphone into my sound card, that's not a bad idea, but it does kinda defeat the purpose of using the H4 as an audio interface. I'd like it if the damn thing just worked as advertised. : P If there's no elegant solution, I might just have to get some RME gear. : D

-Trevor
Wulftone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-03-2009, 11:20 PM   #7
bernhardtjeff
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 94
Default

have you tried connecting the h4 at 48khz instead of 44.1khz? i've used the h4 for a long time as my sole audio interface with asio4all, and it works great, but unless i connect at 48k, it does weird things with latency or just doesn't work. even though i never do any projects in 48k (always 44.1k), if i don't connect that way, weirdness happens, so if you haven't tried that option, you might give it a shot.
bernhardtjeff is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-19-2009, 01:50 PM   #8
carlier74
Human being with feelings
 
carlier74's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Belgium
Posts: 91
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wulftone View Post
Well, I've tried the ASIO drivers provided by Zoom, ASIO4ALL, WDM, and DirectX, and none of them solve the problem. Sometimes it works perfectly, other times it doesn't line up at all. I can move the files manually, but that's really obnoxious. You'd think that even a 10ms latency would work great through ASIO of any sort...

Thanks for the suggestion about using the H4 as simply a microphone into my sound card, that's not a bad idea, but it does kinda defeat the purpose of using the H4 as an audio interface. I'd like it if the damn thing just worked as advertised. : P If there's no elegant solution, I might just have to get some RME gear. : D

-Trevor

I agree about defeating the purpose of the zoom as an audio interface. I've just tried both Reaper and the Cubase LE4 that comes with it, and with both I get a latency of 5ms in and 13ms out. What's strange is that, as mentioned above, sometimes I get a low latency (judging by ear) and sometimes not at all. Maybe I need to try the 48100 trick too.
carlier74 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-26-2009, 05:14 AM   #9
kneelherring
Human being with feelings
 
kneelherring's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 221
Default

Head to the Preferences/Audio/Recording in Reaper, turn off "use driver reported latency" and enter the amount of delay into input manual offset. You can accurately determine the amount of delay using this free tool.

http://www.centrance.com/products/ltu/

Hope this helps.
kneelherring is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2009, 02:18 PM   #10
carlier74
Human being with feelings
 
carlier74's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Belgium
Posts: 91
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by kneelherring View Post
Head to the Preferences/Audio/Recording in Reaper, turn off "use driver reported latency" and enter the amount of delay into input manual offset. You can accurately determine the amount of delay using this free tool.

http://www.centrance.com/products/ltu/

Hope this helps.

Thanks. I downloaded the software but it wouldn't work for my Zoom. It did work for the maudio.
carlier74 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-12-2009, 03:30 AM   #11
kneelherring
Human being with feelings
 
kneelherring's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 221
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by carlier74 View Post
Thanks. I downloaded the software but it wouldn't work for my Zoom. It did work for the maudio.
Did you connect a cable from input to output? This is required to make the loopback.
kneelherring is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-05-2009, 11:21 AM   #12
lavaspin
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 2
Default Zoom H4 ASIO driver locking up Reaper

I'm following up on this earlier thread. I'm having trouble with latency from the H4 too -- much higher than what some have identified. After running inito the problem, I did a search and found this thread and, as a result, downloaded the H4 ASIO driver (I downloaded the 1.0.0.1 version). Reaper recognized it. And I ran a test at the default settings. Latency was still too high. So, I went into the "ASIO Configuration" section to try buffering at a smaller number. I selected the next option below the default option. This locked up Reaper so bad that I ultimately uninstalled the driver and Reaper in order to get back to where I was before -- but I'm not sure I am back to where I was before..... Now, even after uninstalling Reaper and reinstalling, it is acting wierdly -- even without the H4 plugged in, or trying to record. I just loaded an mp3 file to check it out and the song during playback time seems to be dragging, along with a lot of other digital artifacts. CPU usage doesn't seem bad, so I don't think it is my computer -- during playback is at its highest occasionally 16%. Any idea what is going on?

Should I give up on H4 and look for a different interface? I had the H4 for other reasons and thouht I'd try it for this first. Thanks for any helpl

PS: I am a Reaper newbie.
lavaspin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2009, 12:41 AM   #13
lavaspin
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 2
Default

Switching to 48khz (suggested by an earlier poster) may have taken care of the problem. I'll post more after further testing.
lavaspin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-19-2009, 07:32 PM   #14
Wulftone
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 12
Default

Well, it's been a while, and I upgraded the ASIO drivers, the H4 firmware, and Reaper, and still it doesn't report the latency correctly... I've given up on the thing and bought an RME Fireface UC, lol. That ought to take care of my latency issues once it arrives. : P

The H4 doesn't work right on either 44.1kHz or 48kHz. It'll record just fine, but it doesn't line up the tracks even close to correctly when multitracking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kneelherring View Post
turn off "use driver reported latency" and enter the amount of delay into input manual offset.
Manually setting the latency was a good shot, but it still didn't work right. The delay introduced by the H4 was variable... different every time I recorded.

Too bad the H4 still doesn't work right... it would be nice to have for mobile multitrack recording onto my laptop...

-Trevor
Wulftone is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 07:47 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.