Microphone delay when recording in Windows 7

Yes unfortunately i do still have this annoying issue! The only equipment i am using is a usb microphone; The audio program i am using is Cubase 5.0 I highly dought this delay has anything to do with my microphone or my audio program seeing as i used similar devices and  audio programs 10 years ago and it worked fine (but on a older computer and OS~Millennium Edition). I think it might have to do with the new way they have made computers in the last decade. Is it possible that they have made these computers with Latency built in? PLease can anyone tell me what to do!?

MHi,I think found of a solution to our problem. (Maybe it is a workaround but it works)I wanted to use my USB wireless microphone just to sing and to hear my own voice so  I searched without luck for days for some sort of a program or driver.I understand that if microphone is connected through USB to my PCAnd My PC is connected through HDMI to receiver which has all the speakers attached,so no way the analog signal from microphone can go all the way to speakers without being converted to digital and than back to analogue.So the only way is to minimize signal conversion delay as much as it is possible.Luckily one guy wrote audio repeater program.http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htmlHere is direct link:http://software.muzychenko.net/vac410.zipSimply unzip file, DO NOT INSTALL the application. You are only interested in 1 file. There are 2 folders x64 and x86.They have identical content (audiorepeater.exe and audiorepeater_ks.exe)I have Windows 7 64 bit, so I selected x64 of audiorepeater.exe.There select:input device - (USB Microphone)output device - (ATI HDMI output)local buffer - (50 ms)priority (realtime)These settings might differ (depending on how fast is your hardware)Press start. And ... voilà, you can hear yourself almost without any delay. In my case this works fine with karaoke software.I tried audiorepeater_ks.exe and set all the settings as with audiorepeater.exe but when I start karaoke software I don't hear music. Only my voice.If somebody could get this working let me know how. Apparently audiorepeater_ks.exe is a bit faster as it uses some kernel options (Need to be verified)Sergey

Shocked, but this actually works.  Thanks for this tip!  Doesn't make up for the fact that I have to use a piece of freeware to fix something Microsoft has broken, but it'll allow me to limp along for a while.

Just wanted to weigh in here that along with all you musicians, we court reporters are the other group that seems most affected by this debacle.  I'm running a Sony Vaio Z series, W7 64-bit, and the latency is a good 500ms, completely unbearable when listening to others in the room in real time.  I've tried the driver rollback, but Sony doesn't trust users to do that, won't allow anything to install than the newest Realtek code.  I have an identical issue with either the on-board sound or a USB sound device (which works impeccably on my XP machine, I might add), so the only non-variable in the situation is Windows 7.

Actually considered the XP downgrade, but I've heard too many others mention that's not a 100% fix either, so hate to go to all that trouble for nothing.

Please, please, please send this up the chain and let's get this licked in SP1!!!  This may be a small issue on the whole, but it's a huge issue for those of us that need it to work like it's always worked before.

Mike "Depoman" Miller

Don't ask me why.. but I had the same problem with my Creative Soundblaster X-Fi...

I just solved ina  very simple way, even if I don't yet understand what causes this:

SOLUTION:

Right click the volume icon in the tray.

Select RECORDIN DEVICES.

Select MICROPHONE.

Click PROPERTIES.

Go to LISTEN TAB.

Uncheck the "Listen to this device".

DONE. No delay (<10ms)

Zibri

http://www.zibri.org

I have the same problem at first when i bought my hp g42-362tx laptop. It's because i want to monitor my voice from microphone and couldn't mic volume tab in mixer, so i go to the "manage audio device" and manage to find the microphone option in the recording tab and in the listen tab i tick the "listen to this device" option. The sound did came out but to my horror it got delay on it, so i google all the way to solve this problem. And i found from someone's screenshot that there is actually a microphone sound level in the speakers tab, while mine don't have it. So i googled again for the registry to activate or manipulate this problem. I manage to find some registry manipulation in some forum and that manipulation did solve others' problem, and that trick work like charm for them but NOT for me. No mattter how i change the registry i still cannot have the microphone sound level under the speakers level tab. At last I ask my friend that if he had that mic sound under speakers level tab (he is also using windows 7 64bit), and he answered "yes". It makes me more confused because if it's the OS problem then why his laptop have while mine don't. So i asked him to take his laptop to my house while i examine the registry in his registry editor to compare which key i dont't have so i can add it manually. Done all that but it was fruitless. But i happen to look at the driver details again and found that his driver was actually older than mine (our soundcard was Realtek HD Audio). Mine was produced at 2010 and his was 2009. Troubleshooting all that, finally i decided to downgrade my driver to the 2009 production. Before downgrading, you must first uninstall the existing driver and delete all the file located at program files and program filesx86 folder labeled "Realtek". After that i run the installer (sp46836.exe file i downloaded from the HP website) and after the restart the windows automatically install the 2010 driver again, so i go to the c:/swsetup/sp46836 and run the setup again. This time i saw my driver finally downgraded to the 2009 version, after that the windows prompted a restart. After restarting the machine, i go to the speakers level tab again and TADAAAAA!!!! i got my mic sound level there and it is muted. I am overjoyed, my few days googling and experimenting finally got a result. I unmute the mic and test with my mic and YES!, there was no delay again in the playback. I think the delay was caused by the software monitoring of the windows 7. When we tick the "Listen to this device", we actually are hearing the mic sound loop produce by windows 7 software, like when we chat in messenger there will be few milisecond delay (not realtime). But if we used the mic level in the speakers tab it was the hardware loop, meaning we hear the sound of mic directly from the mic jack to speakers or headphones so there was no delay at all. In my humble opinion, some drivers don't provide the mic level under speakers level tab because they afraid of some noob user will activate the laptop internal mic and it will collide or produce high pitched feedback with the laptop speakers. So please don't ever unmute the mic while you don't have headphones attached it will cause problem for your speakers. PS: Maybe the downgrading drivers solution is not useful for all, so for some people maybe they need to upgrade the drivers. Upgrading or downgrading is not a fixed choice, as long as that driver can make the mic sound level appeared under the speakers playback. Actually we don't have to always upgrade our audio drivers because not all upgrade are beneficial to our needs, becasue sometimes in the new version some features were removed. That was my experience on how i solved my mic delaying problem, hope it can be useful to others. Cheers :)