I was directly plug my guitar into my macbook pro for recording. However, when I use Garageband's guitar amp simulation plug in, it somehow sounds a bit lag when I play. Is it normal? or I have to buy the cable that is designed to do the job?
Hi there. If I understand your English, I'm guessing that the lag is due to the speed of the Macbook Pro. It may not be fast enough to process the amp simulation plug in in real time.williamh said:I was directly plug my guitar into my macbook pro for recording. However, when I use Garageband's guitar amp simulation plug in, it somehow sounds a bit lag when I play. Is it normal? or I have to buy the cable that is designed to do the job?
PCMacUser said:Hi there. If I understand your English, I'm guessing that the lag is due to the speed of the Macbook Pro. It may not be fast enough to process the amp simulation plug in in real time.
zimv20 said:what you're hearing is latency. the signal you're hearing has to go through an analog to digital stage, be processed by the software, and then be rerouted back through a digital to analog stage so you can hear it.
the 1st and 3rd stages are not instantaneous and, for a particular setup, those values are fixed. the software stage can be made longer by adding plugs at record time.
so while a faster machine may help with the middle bit, you're still going to get latency. as recommended, you should record without plugs to minimize the latency, but you won't eliminate it so long as you're monitoring as you are.
there are other options, such as monitoring your analog signal before it hits the converters. there are a number of ways of doing that, the most basic being a y-cable, and the rest being further implementations of a y-cable (half-normal patch bay, split through a mixer, etc.).
That will address to another question, which audio interface works the best with Mac and Logic?
it depends on how you define the problem.williamh said:If I get an audio interface (say Motu Ultralite), problem will solve right?
...which leads me to believe they've implemented a y-cord inside the device. but it must be doing some processing, otherwise it'd be "no latency".virtually no monitoring latency