imic..anyone use these things????, need help with the imic please Options

[radiohead]

I just bought an imic to use with my mac. However, im now finding things saying that you cant hear it realtime because it has latency or lag, and stuff like that. Does anyone here use the imic to record music with, and if so, how can you record songs if it has lag? You wouldnt be able to hear what you are doing along with what you have already recorded, so it sounds like you would be in the dark...am i right about this?. I am basically wondering if this thing is just a piece of crap and i should send it back. Im really not ready to shell out a ton for a soundcard, and just wanted something decent to record vocals, guitars, etc with. But if i cant start recording my songs, then this computer is useless. I have cubase and protools free and am using a roland mic. If anyone can help me out i would greatly appreciate it. I basically want to see if anyone has actually made real songs with the imic on music programs, or is it just used for doing stuff like imovie and recording messages or something? any info would be greatly appreciated. thanks alot.

[jaylan]

Hi,

Latency is a phenomenon that occurs only when you record a track (it can be audio or midi track). While you play, you hear a delay between the time you play the note and the time you hear it. Normally, the others track are well in place.

Latency depends on many elements, such as : operating system, CPU performance, available RAM, driver used, software used, etc.

On a PowerMac G3 or G4, 256 Mb of RAM are highly recommended for performance. However, many experiences seem to show that, even with a good driver, Cubase is responsible for latency in many cases. For example, I use a Digidesign Digi 001 audio interface, and have 35 ms of latency, while Logic Audio shows no latency, while using the same driver.

About iMic, I'm sorry I can't tell much. But I guess that, given that this product is low-priced, performance might be low as well...

[radiohead]

so, if there is latency, how can one line things up in a song and make sure that they are in time together? If you know what i mean...if what you hear is behind or out of time with what you are playing, then it would seem impossible to get all of the tracks of a song in order together....this would seem like a big problem to me...is there some solution to this latency problem? thanks alot

[jaylan]

Latency occurs only WHILE monitoring on recording.

The solution is :
- monitor the track being recorded to level 0,
- monitor from the source (ex. guitar preamp with headphone), or do NOT monitor the track being recorded if you are sure of what you are recording

After recording, all tracks should be in time. Because latency is not a recording problem, it is only a monitoring problem while recording, which is quite different.