Latency With The M-audio 1814 Or Motu 828mkii, Question about recording latencies Options

[Supernaut]

Hello All

I've been doing PC recording using Linux in my home studio for a while now. Great sound, but I've had it with the latency. I've bought a G4 PowerBook (which is frickin' glorious btw) and I am evaluating the FireWire interfaces.

I need at *least* 5 input channels, so both the M-Audio 1814 and the MoTU 828mkII fit the bill perfectly. My question is, does anyone have any experience with these devices doing tracking and overdubbing in a studio setting? Let me explain my problem and what I want to achieve:

We are basically a hard rock and heavy metal band. We usually record the drums first, then the bass (1 or 2 tracks), then 2 rhythm guitar tracks, then leads and vocals. Usually, by the time I get to the leads, I have latency issues. I'll be playing back the recorded tracks, recording the lead in real time, and then when I play it all back I end up having to manually shift the lead and/or vocal tracks (and sometimes the other tracks) to the left to make up for the latency.

I've had it, I can't take it any more. I know some latency is unavoidable - how is it with these firewire interfaces? Any experiences? I've also recorded a lot to an ADAT and, while this mostly solves the latency issues, you only get 8 tracks and I *HATE* mucking around with tapes.

Note that I have very little use for post-processing (besides inter-track silliness ;-), nor is there much going on in the way of effects after the amps, no midi, etc., yet - I'm only interested in capturing live instruments for tracking. Perhaps there's a way to apply some sort of sync track to each individual track as in video engineering? Do some of the upper-level software packages have ways to accomodate this latency?

Suggestions welcome - both the 1814 and the 828mkII are in the price range I'm willing to spend.

Thanks in advance!

JB

[NeoMagick]

Hey -

No experience using it with any apple gear, but I can tell you that on an XP sys at least (a shuttle XPC w/ a P4 2.8ghz, 1gb ram, and a 200gb SATA 7200 drive) i successfully recorded 15 tracks at once with a pair of Motu 828mkIIs daisychained at a gig. The only noise in the tracks came from a couple wires that were shorted out in a mic line, after we got rained out. I don't know if your PB has full 6pin firewire, but i do know that the 828mkII says it requires a full 6pin line. My laptop (a vaio PCG-FXA49) detected the motu when I linked it up using the motu as a firewire bridge to move files to my studio system, but i didn't install the drivers. Detection doesn't mean full support though.

I don't know if/how asio works on the mac, but I can tell you that the DSP (digital signal processing) in the motu is incredible. Patching a live guitar in to an input and running it through something like NI's GuitarRig which then patch to a couple of pedal effects, and then BACK into the MOTU to go into my live audio sequencer, all plays with at MOST 13ms latency time.

(guitar --> motu in --> guitar rig --> motu out --> pedals --> motu in --> sequencer ... in less than 15ms...)

I, like you, struggled for a while deciding between the M-Audio and the MOTU. But now, I'd suggest going for the motu. Its onboard systems and processing power are absolutely astounding. I've found new ways to put it to use every day.

Let me know if i can answer any more questions about it.

Cheers,
NM