VEGANGELICA

Hello, All,

I would like advice on how best to record drums so that they are in synch with my previously recorded vocals and/or electric guitar tracks using Sony's ACID Music Studio 7.0. The problem is that when I play along with the metronome, the drum tracks always have a delay that is longer than the delay that occurs with the vocals and guitar tracks, which are recorded separately.

I am using a fairly old Highball Unidirectional Dynamic Microphone, which I place down low in between my snare, floor tom and bass, and it does a decent job capturing all the sounds from the drum set. However, when I do recordings in time to the ACID Music Studio metronome (which I listen to through Vic Firth ear protecting ear phones), the actual drum track ends up with a slight delay that is *longer* than the delay that occurs with the guitar and vocal tracks (the guitar and vocals tracks are also always slightly delayed with respect to the metronome).

Since the delay with the drums is longer than with the vocals and guitar, the result is that the 3 tracks (guitar, vocals, and drums) do not line up (although the electric guitar, which I record with the microphone right in front of the amp, lines up with the vocals fairly well).

I have tried to compensate for the longer drum delay in two ways:

(1) When I play the drums, I try to play slightly in advance of the metronome tick (but sometimes this leads to the drums being too early when I overcompensate);

(2) I've tried to use ACID Music Studio 7.0 to add in a few milliseconds of time to the guitar and vocal tracks to delay them with respect to the sluggish drums, but have not gotten this to work. It seems as if all the tracks get the time delay added, and not just the non-drum tracks.

I would appreciate any suggestions you have for easily getting the drums in synch with the other instruments in recordings. I had thought it would be as simple as playing along with the metronome, because I hoped all recordings (drums, vocals, guitar) would have an equal time delay with respect to the metronome tick, but it isn't this simple.

Thanks!

--Erica

PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe

Well...your first problem is the program. ACID isn't that great of a recording program.

What you're describing confuses me though. Is there any way you can bounce/export the song as an MP3 or AIFF file and upload it somewhere and post a link to it? I might be able to give a few suggestions if I hear exactly what you're talking about.

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ElephantSack

I disagree. Every time I have ever recorded in any studio, drums are always first to be laid down to track. One, they're the biggest and most complicated instrument to record. Two, rhythm and beat are the the foundation of the song. And when you record, its just like building a house. You start at the bottom with the foundation, get the basic structure of the song put up, and once its well put-together, you add on whatever extras come to mind.

My advice would be to start over. Record the drums first, then move to bass and guitar. And lastly, add the vocals. Trust me, it will be a lot easier next time around.

PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe

That has nothing to do with what I said about ACID at all. And I know the process of studio recording. Not only have I been in a band that has recorded multiple times, but I'm majoring in audio engineering.

The pops at the beginning and end of the track are normal. If you do punch-ins and spot edits you'll get them in the middle of the tracks as well. I'm not sure what the equivalent is in ACID but in ProTools there's a waveform editing tool (a pencil that allows you to redraw the waveform). Find where the pop is in the waveform (it may be a tedious process) and smooth out that section.

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VEGANGELICA

Thanks for the tip, pERfEctIOntHRusILEncE,
I'll have to look into how to use the waveform editing tool, which I've never done (having never edited my tracks before). I just know I was surprised by the pops because when listening to the tracks/songs, say at the very beginning, the track appears to be flatline, and I can't *hear* the pop until I save the song as an MP3, so I didn't think to look at an expanded view of the tracks and check for noise. Thanks again for your help!
--Erica

Freebase Dali

The pops may not be caused by a peak in the recording itself, but a hard transition from having no sound, to having sound (even if it's just background noise). Although it's weird that you don't hear that until export.
If that's the case, the simple fix is, prior to exporting, to create a volume envelope that quickly ramps up from no sound, up to normal level. Obviously, you'll want a little lead time to do this in, but you wouldn't need more than a second of time for it to be effective.

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VEGANGELICA

Hi, PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe (phew!),

Thanks for your reply.

Ahh...I feared ACID might be a problem since it was rather inexpensive. However, in this case I suspect the issue may simply be the delay caused by the sound traveling from my drums to the microphone 12 inches away from bass, snare, and tom. In contrast, when I'm playing the electric guitar or singing, I have the mike around 1-2 inches away from the amplifier and, well, me. Perhaps that 10 inches of difference is enough to cause the extra long time delay with the drum recordings. (If I were feeling motivated I would calculate the predicted time delay based on the speed of sound).

I have made a recording of a song including the drums (where I was trying to play ahead of the ACID metronome to compensate for the delay)...if you wish you go to my contact information you can get to my MySpace page and the first song that pops up is the one where I've tried to mesh the drums with the "first drafts" of the guitar and vocals.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will be very helpful in diagnosing my recording problem, PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe, because the main observation you'll probably make is that the 3 tracks just don't line up well (I need to redo the guitar and vocals more carefully...and then try again with the drums). However, you are welcome to listen if you would like!

I suspect what I'm going to have to do is read more carefully what others have said about miking drum sets (Veridical Fiction appears to have an informative post about this).

Since you mention problems with ACID, I have found one problem with ACID that I can't seem to solve: when I am listening to the ACID program metronome through earphones while doing a recording (with all exterior speakers turned off), the sound of the metronome appears to bleed through electronically into the recording!! The PerFeCTioNist in me cringes, but I've accepted it for now.

Thanks again for your reply!

--Erica

PerFeCTioNThrUSileNCe

The delay being caused by the positioning of the microphone is not a likely cause. Sound travels fast enough that the difference of a few inches would have no noticeable effect on what you would hear when playing back the track. Using one micf definitely isn't the best way to record a drum kit though. When I get home from work I'll listen to your recordings and try to get a better idea of what you're experiencing.

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VEGANGELICA

Hello again! Yes...I would have been surprised if 10 inches of difference in microphone position would cause the sound delay. Thanks for verifying sound travels fast enough such that my drum track delay shouldn't be due to that issue!

Say...when I record the drums for the second song on my myspace playlist, I'll plan to make a recording of the drums by themselves with the metronome as a single track, and will post it on the myspace page. That will probably be the best way to hear what I'm talking about with the drum track delay. I'll make an entry here when that is up, in case you'd like to listen to it. Thanks again for your interest in this issue. --Erica

Freebase Dali

Ok, Vegangelica...
Your problem definitely isn't microphone distance, because at the distances you're operating with, the only factors would be phasing if you're using more than one mic on a source.
The problem you're experiencing is "high latency". Latency is the amount of time that an audio signal takes to travel from the source to the destination, through your equipment/computer/whatever.

Latency issues like yours can be attributed to your music program, audio interface, and your computer's processing power itself. You'll never have zero latency, as it will ultimately take some time for any signal to pass through any medium, but generally 10 milliseconds of latency is considered fast enough for no noticeable effect. I operate my DAW at much higher latencies than 10 milliseconds and I have no noticeable issues unless I'm using input monitoring, so something is really impeding your audio signal.

There are ways to get around latency problems, but you have to identify the root of the problem.
Answer the following questions:

1. What audio interface/sound card are you using?
2. What are the specs of your PC? (Ram, processor, etc..)
3. Does Acid have any buffer settings? (playback buffer size, recording buffer size, etc..)
(Buffers are basically storage for audio to be used on demand. If your buffer size is large, you'll have more stable and consistent audio with less drop-outs, but your latency will be higher. The inverse of this is also true. Lowering your recording buffers will give you lower latency, but your PC must be able to handle the demand that puts on it.)

Those are three important factors in determining what kind of latency you'll be dealing with. Get back to me on that and we'll continue from there.

Also, just a couple observations here:
The fact that you get a constant delay value when recording instruments prior to the drums, that could be telling you a lot about how much your computer & sound card is being bogged down by the pre-existing audio that's being played while you're recording the drums.
To test this, you may want to experiment by recording in opposite and seeing if the last thing you record becomes the instrument that's delaying.
You'll also want to consider the fact that drum peaks are far sharper and have more attack than vocals and guitar, so obviously any drum delay you're getting will be more noticeable.

Also, in cases where latency is unable to be avoided, you can be sure that (if simple latency is your problem) the delay will be consistent along the entire recording of that specific track. What that means is you can select the delayed track and nudge it backwards until it lines up with the pre-existing audio.
If you try to do that and the delay is noticeably more/less and changes as the track goes on, you're not dealing with latency so much as a recording program fault and/or a problem with your sound card.

Also, I would definitely not try to manually compensate for delay while playing, as you're going to get some inconsistent recordings. Really, a metronome is best served for tracking the initial track (guitars maybe?), to which you can either sing to or play drums to without the use of a metronome by virtue of the fact that your initial track was recorded to one.

Anyway, I hope you got a good idea of what I'm talking about. Answer those questions and I'll be able to help a little more.

Thanks.

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