Microphone delay when recording in Windows 7

nah Microsoft never cared at all!! had a workaround for my desktop maybe because it has realtek hd and mic volume slider is present in Playback Devices but not on my dell inspiron laptop with Sigmatel HD. last year i tried my laptop with linux and alsa but still had latency issue.. ya MS is simply just a BS

not worthless, just requires too much extra efforts

LOL, I like your response, and sadly this is very true for most users that are into recording. I have a small studio running fl studio and a decent bit of external eq and have about 15 clients that use my studio. Recently when my machine failed running xp pro, things went south, I took the time to build a pretty beefy window 7 quadcore machine. And the machine is tough, powerful and fast. However, sound recording utils are simply not friendly are even focused on with this OS. I have found some work arounds and created a few myself, to get the base of things underway again. But some of the work arounds and things required simply to do your recoridng work with this OS makes me wonder who the moron was. I can think of no less than 50 or so musicans that have left the windows market for mac due to this very thing. And honestly, after a lot of research its a few simple things they could do to make everything "lovely" again for recording, why they arent doing what they should is beyond me. When you spend 500 on a pro qualit sounbd card, and another 500-1000 on software, and finally another 750 or so in must have eq, mics, micers etc and you plug everything up and for starters it gives you so many prolems, due tot he driver signing ****. But thats only the beginning. This is just insane, however, on that note. I will explain briefly what I did to bring things semi back up to speed.

* I purchased an additional sound card, I did not disable the on board sound, realtek hd. I enabled the stereo mix setting which isnt diver controlled btw, not techincally, but it is hidden and available in most windows 7 distros. After this I configured my studio software to use the on board card and a output only device, back into my external mixer, and with multiple loopbacks used the new soud card for nothing more than main mic input from the external mixer. This made everything work without alot of latency and other problems, however I recommend to stay away from anything usb in regards to inout devices, unless it contain and entire rig to be used, or you WILL fight with mic delays and bad matching and latency, regardless. So if you go with usb solutions which do work, make sure its a full contained solutions, not just an input device, or your gonna be mad. Even though i got everything working great on my windows 7 64 bit, and it works better than it did with xp, the routes and work arounds required and extra expense for no reason, are an ooutrage. I too have decided to consider building another windows xp pro box, and or most likely going mac for all my recording needs. I hope me tqalking about my situation with windows 7 64 bot and recording has shed some light, and givien some ideas to hopfully get you guys recording again, but more importantly I hope it lets you know, you are not alone, microsoft has completely dropped the ball with windows 7 64, well all of windows 7 in regards to professional sound, or recording, which is troubling to me, media and personal freedom is the entire representation of windows, and ease of use, windows 7, though powerful for what it does do, doesnt fit the bill at all for what I felt microsoft stood for in the OS's...Happy times withy our efforts work arounds, and likely mac shopping. I hope microsoft grows a brain soon enough and releases a coouple patches to make everything lovely again, or they are gonna find out the hard way, how fast people will change os"s, like to mac these days, where in the past it was unlikely and foriegjn, its not anymore, its very common and likely, they better get on their toes. Take care..

Best Regards,

Legend

www.TheLegendSystem.com

******@thelegendsystem.com

-FREE SERVICE RELEASE SHOWING OUR TELEPHONY SKILLS "After Dark Chatline" its free, 724-507-6666

After three days researching this problem (install/uninstall all those different version drivers, replacing/return four different audio cards including 2 usb devices), I figured out that mic delay is unavoidable in some machines.

1. If you are using digital audio output (either SPDIF or HDMI), you will get the mic and linein delay, no matter which audio card you installed. You will not see the Mic or Line in slides under the Level tab in playback device properties.  No matter how many channels your HDMI supports, you computer has to encode all signals sources (system sound, waveout, or mic/line-in) in order to output digital bits. If all signals are digital, which means no mic or line-in, system still need transcode all those signals in supported bit depth and sample rates since they are in different format or sampling rates, which generates delay.  If adding Mic and linein, the delay will be even bigger since Mic and linein are analog signals and need to be sampled into digital signals.  ("Listen to"  feature actually enable another layer of delay.)
2. If you are using analog audio output, you should be able to find Mic or Line in slide under the Level tab in playback device properties (your milage may vary, depending on drivers). With "listen" feature disabled and "Mic" enabled in Level tab of playback device properties, the situation will be much more bearable, although in theory you will still experience delay. Mixing analog signals can be done in real time.

I gave up singing Karaoke in Windows 7 system since theoretically it is impossible if I keep my HTPC in current config. I don't want to hook up 6 audio cables into my receiver any more , moreover, my brand new 2011 receiver does not come with multiple inputs as in its previous generation.