Talk:Tutorial - Recording Multi-track Overdubs

Gale 13Feb12: Not sure what the point of this page is. It will not be in the Manual. It will only be found online if stumbled upon. I already added Koz to Credits. If he wants to be specifically credited there for the tutorial that's fine too.

Credits
Primary Author: Greg Kozikowski The technical spadework of developing these tutorials, testing the techniques and writing up the initial copy was undertaken by Greg Kozokowski (Koz). Many grateful thanks to him

Editors: Edgar Musgrove, Steve Daulton, Bill Wharrie, Peter Sampson and Gale Andrews The editorial team put many hours into honing and polishing Koz' original material,so thanks are due to them too.

Peter 7Feb12: now parked on the Talk Page as I have included the meat of this in the top-level tutorial.

Software overdubbing
You may do overdubbing/multi-track in software with careful computer management. The process can take serious commitment in study, time or money, and is rarely as perfect and simple as with the hardware devices:


 * Tutorial: Overdubbing using software methods

steve 8Feb12: The Line input of PC soundcards (if available) is generally much better than the Mic input, so I don't think that the following is a fair comparison unless we have some test data to show that it is the case:

The soundcards and sound services on a Mac are usually superior to those on a PC. Peter 8Feb12:[ToDo]

"Standard PC soundcards may not support ASIO®." Gale: 11Feb12: Is this common enough to warn? I have never had a stock motherboard card that doesn't support ASIO.

Software overdubbing
The "software option" is highly platform dependent. I think that we may need separate Linux, Mac, Windows sections. For example: The set-up for each of these are completely different, but correct set-up is crucial for achieving live monitoring (playthrough).
 * ASIO is (mostly) specific to Windows (can be used on Mac but rarely is).
 * Jackd and PulseAudio are (mostly) specific to Linux (They can be used on Windows / Mac but rarely are).
 * Core Audio is specific to Mac.
 * Windows Sound System (obviously) specific to Windows
 * Gale: 11Feb12: Added for Windows Vista and 7 above. It can move to this section if we have one. Am I right - Mac can use LineIn from Rogue Amoeba which is faster than Audacity software playthrough (which doesn't always work anyway)?

ASIO® device drivers
It's very difficult to control the sound pathways in a soundcard, particularly since most soundcard makers don't try.

There are ways to force consumer grade soundcards to work for overdubbing by carefully minimizing sound errors and latency/delays. High end audio programs like Adobe Audition® and the newer Avid ProTools® use special software drivers to make the computer take the shortest possible pathway with the least latency for each task.

ASIO® software is one way to minimize latency, echoes and delays. Audacity cannot be delivered with ASIO latency support because Audacity is freely licensed and ASIO is not. You can make a new Audacity with ASIO support built-in, but it requires you to compile Audacity from the source code including ASIO libraries. Every time a new Audacity version comes out, you'll need to do it again.

See this page in the Audacity Wiki for more information on ASIO and also this external page for instructions on how to compile Audacity on Windows. Be warned it is not for the faint of heart! You are warned that if you do manage to make it through compiling the program, your new Audacity is a personal copy for your own use only and may not be distributed, made available to anybody else nor posted anywhere public, ever. ASIO is not required for software playthrough on Windows. Software playthrough will work with standard Windows drivers by just selecting the "Software Playthrough" option in the Transport menu. However, with standard Windows drivers the playthrough delay is likely to be unacceptably slow when using Audacity 1.3.x. The playthrough delay was typically much faster in Audacity 1.2.x and for many users was just about acceptable. (Audacity 1.3.x uses "safer but slower" latency settings.)

Not all soundcards support ASIO. Virtually all soundcards designed for music production do support ASIO on Windows. General consumer grade soundcards may not. ASIO support may or may not be common, but it would be surprising if most on-board soundcards did not support ASIO.