Need Help With Lag Options

[tburn]

Hi, idk really where to post this so im sorry if this is the wrong place. But I have a mac, and I run GarageBand and Ableton live. When I play via my midi keyboard connected through the usb hub, its fine. But when I plug in my guitar through the jack next to the headphone jack, it lags pretty bad. Same thing when I run my synth through that jack. How can I take the sound from my hardware synth and guitar into my DAW's without lag? Like what exactly do I need to buy, as cheap as possible haha

Thanks,
Tyler

[tonester]

That "lag" you speak of is what is know as "latency" in the computer audio world, and is inherent in all computer audio systems.It is the time it takes the sound to go from your guitar through the input to the DAW and back out to you. There is only a minimal MIDI "lag", because you are not technically dealing with audio, and chances are you would never even notice it. While you can't really get rid of audio latency altogether, you can take steps to minimize it to where it is almost not discernible to the human ear.

You say you are using the built-in input of the mac, correct? Try opening the audio/midi setup (found under utilities) and playing around with the buffer settings under the input section. I think the default is 512. You can try decreasing it to 256. Increasing it will cause further lag. Any lower than 256, and chances are your system will grind to a halt, depending on how much RAM you have installed.

Which brings me to my next point: if you would rather just use the Mac's built in audio input, try increasing your RAM.

There are a lot of inexpensive Audio interfaces on the market. It all depends on your budget and your system (which you haven't given any specs for)

it helps to list the specs for your system. Is it an iMac or a Mac pro? Processor speed? RAM?

Hope this helps......