Sonar3 & Kx (Recording Vocals) Realtime Effects

vynum

First of all I would like to thank every single person who is involved with this Kx Project. I have been having major problem with Blue Screen of Death for about 6 months. Come to find out it was the Sound Blaster Live Drivers sharing memory were it shouldn't be and conflicting with drivers in upper memory. I completely uninstalled the blaster drivers and installed the Kx drivers and I haven't seen a blue screen yet. As far as the sound quality I notice a big, big difference. The Kx drivers in my case are very clean, strong and effective. I did not know my sound card and speakers could sound so good.

Now on to my situation at hand.

I am attempting to record 2 simple audio tracks in Cakewalk Sonar 3. I laid down my guitar track with no problem. What I would like to do on my vocal track is to hear my effects in realtime but not actually record the effects. If I could record the effects in realtime also that would be great too.

PROBLEM: Delay Effect from my input source , which is the MIC. When I say, "hello", I have about a 1 second delay before I actually hear my voice going thru the effects. Cakewalk's Help section told me to mute "line-in". But when I do this with Kx's mixer, I still have this delay, echo effect.

Singing into a mic "dry" is dull and flat and hurts me to bring out the best in my vocals. How can I hear my vocals while applying effects in realtime? Also, is it possible to set the effects that I want, sing with the effects while recording without this delay echo effect?

I really don't care if My vocals are recorded dry or wet. I can apply the wet to the wav file after it is recorded. But I most certainly need the reverb, chorus etc.. while I sing my part, or practcing my part.

One last thing. You know how when you simply hook up a mic and sing without any effects how, low in volume it sounds? And there is basically no base or mids in the vocals? What EQ is the best to thicken up the vocals while rehearsing before I actally lay down my vocal track? Another words, I wish to get my Mic Eq'ed and effects applied so I know exactly how it is going to sound before I record or perform a final mix down?

Thanks for helping me get rid of the delay and echo. I know it must be a routing issue and I must do something , but what must I do?

vynum

admk

G'day m8,

Your delay problem is probably (and anyone please correct me if i'm wrong) because you have Sonar's "Input Monitoring" enabled on the track you're trying to record. This function will enable you to monitor your input signal, but only after its passed through Sonar's audio engine, and will be affected by some latency which can be adjusted in the Audio options but will be limited in some way by your hardware.

Your best option is to not use "input monitoring" and setup your kXDSP so that your "mic" gets monitored with a nice dose of reverb but goes to sonar clean...

Check out my setup here.....

http://www.geocities.com/kxsonar/kxsonar.htm

just whacked this together tonight, so hope it's OK

hopefully this can help!

As for getting more Body in your mic, i'd check the gain of everything first before putting an EQ on it, but if u must you can always add and EQ plugind into your Mics signal path and just bypass it when recording..

admk

vynum

Hey admk,

Thanks for the info. It will most definantly come in handy.

Turning off the "realtime monitor" only disables any thruput of the DSP of cakewalk, so turning this feature off cuts off any effects what so ever. However, I have solved my problem and here is how simple it was. This was taken directly from the Cakewalk Sonar's HELP file. Simply by leaving the defaults in routing of the Kx drivers and enabling the ASIO drivers inside of cake walk now enables me to apply in "realtime" what ever effects I wish and now I'm able to sing, practice and lay down vocal tracks with the same effects I have set up. I had to turn off the "realtime input" monitoring although it doesn't really make any difference now since I enabled the ASIO drivers in Cakewalk:

SONAR supports ASIO drivers. You are limited to a single sound card when using an ASIO driver.

To Use an ASIO Driver
Use the following procedure to enable SONAR for use with an ASIO driver.

Select Options-Audio to open the Audio Options dialog.
In the Audio Options dialog, click the Advanced tab.
In the Playback and Recording section, select ASIO from the Driver Mode dropdown menu.
Restart SONAR.

I've read in another thread somewerz on this Forum that some people said it might be necessary to go out and buy a mic "preamp" to get the vocals to sound good. This is not the case in my testing. With as many VSTi effects and even cakewalks DSP it is highly possible to get the vocals to sound awsome and extremely responsive. I found out that you should have at least these DSP's setup on your vocal track:

1. Noise Gate
2. Compressor
3. FxReverb ( or any other reverb or combination there of. There is no limit)
4. Track EQ.
5. Parametric EQ
6. Paragraphic EQ.

OPTIONAL:

7.Surround

NOTE: Any other effect you desire can be applied. Since I have a Fast CPU and 512K of ram This works out great for me. I still have a bit of tweaking to do but the possiblities are endless and to make a simple point. I am recording my vocals on a very cheap $12.00 Labtech Dynamic AM-22 mic and it sounds totally awsome. What people have to remember is that the mic is sending a low analog signal thru the input of the soundcard. And thanks to the Kx drivers I don't even have to select the [boost] button to gain that +20db which really adds alot of noise. I get fine results with out it. And to keep noise at the very minium I keep the Main Record [Gain] in the A97 down around 1 or 2.

ASIO drivers. I dont know what they are or neither do I know what ASIO stands for but it saved me on this. Your help & information will be valuable to me in the near future. Thanks.

In closing, if any of you out there that are using Cake Walk Sonar 3, and are getting that echo effect with your mic, after installing the Kx drivers, simply enable ASIO drivers in CakeWalk and your set. You will no longer have any echo or delay. You can apply any DSP effects to your vocal track and hear them while you practice and while you record. After you record a take, simply hit the play button and you will be amazed at how great you sound.