TuneTracker™ QuickTip

Delay in Your Headphones - The Buffer Tradeoff

If there is a downside to using line-input rather than a switcher when bringing in live audio, it is latency. Latency is a very slight delay between the time audio arrives at the sound card and the time audio exits the sound card. It's brief enough to be measured in milliseconds, but it means that, if you're listening to audio coming from the sound card's line-out, while your talking is being fed into the line in, there will be a hollow, or echo-ey sound to it.

There are a couple things you can do to minimize latency.

1. The left and right arrow buttons let you flip through pages and pages of MyShow buttons, all configured exactly as you want them.
2. In ZETA Media Preferences, assure that Real Time Audio is enabled (do this in any case!)
   
3. The left and right arrow buttons let you flip through pages and pages of MyShow buttons, all configured exactly as you want them.
4. In SoundPlay Settings/Preferences, click on Decoders, then Audio Input, then Configure, and change to a Small buffer size, then close SoundPlay completely so the change is "remembered," and relaunch it along with TuneTracker.

On some systems, reducing buffer size can cause a staticky sound. If this happens, return the buffer size to what it was previously.

If you do intend to monitor the output of the TuneTracker computer while talking live into it, and you find the latency distracting, you may find it works best to do without headphones and just have the volume turned up slightly on the speakers...loud enough to know you're on, but not loud enough to cause feedback.

What we prefer to any of the above approaches is to use the line-in on your TuneTracker computer strictly for taking audio from networks and other audio sources, and instead feed the output of your Tunetracker computer into a mixer on its way to your transmitter. Then, run your mic and other audio sources through the mixer. That's how many of the commercial radio stations handle it. Alternatively, you can run the TuneTracker computer's output, your mixer's output, and all other audio sources such as other studios, networks, etc., through one of our ToneTracker switchers, which gives you the most powerful, flexible arrangement of all.

Next time, we'll show you a diagram of a suggested studio setup that shows a way to set things up to optimize things for a TuneTracker computer, a mixer, and a switcher.

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