What interface works best for GB? NO delay, latency issues please!!!

Question

What is the best way to record electric guitar or a microphone (for acoustic & vocals) into Garage Band? I tried plugging directly in to the mic input and selected low latency but there still is a bit of delay. I assume I need a USB or firewire interface. What are some good ones that are ultra portable? This is for the road. Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Zadamanim wrote:
wouldnt getting a super CPU fix latency issues? even if it did have to be routed through a thousand places, a fast processor could get it done without latency issues, no?
Yes and no!
First, Garageband gives you limited ability to change the size of its buffer, which impacts latency. So even if your CPU were fast enough, I'm not sure if GB would allow you to dial down the buffer size in order to fully take advantage of it.
Second, latency isn't only a function of CPU speed. There are other places where the audio can get bottlenecked as it makes its way in and out and through the computer. That's why some of the systems that market themselves as ultra-low latency for professional work use PCIe cards in order to shovel audio back and forth faster than is possible via USB or Firewire. For example, Apogee's Symphony System connects via a proprietary PCIe card in order to offer phenomenally low latency rivaling dedicated systems that use the computer only as a host (Garageband is a native system that uses the computer for everything).
So while a fast CPU is at the heart of the latency issue, there are a number of surrounding issues that also influence it. The workaround of having an interface with its own routing system - so you can listen to your audio as you record before it has a chance to go through the computer and get delayed - is a cheap and elegant, if imperfect solution.