Is there such thing as "ASIO drift"?

I've been recording guitar parts a few measures at a time. Seems like it's the only way to get it "perfect". Thought that's just how I needed to do it. So, after doing this locked to the Reaper metronome, I tried track live drums to it. Which meant playing across these few measures. It noticed, like the guitar bits, it seems like "gee, I can't play in time?" after awhile. This drove me nuts this weekend. Tried and tried to play perfectly on beat, got weird timing problems. Thought "well, I'm not technically a drummer, it's me". Or, the DM5 is being erratic with it's output. I checked that by micing the pads and checking the latency offset of the DM5. As far as *my* timing goes, I've tracked guitar parts in CEP that match to within 1 ms - sometimes I've zoomed in and it's within the same cycle. At one point when I was younger and into trying to do things "perfect", I could make certain guitar tracks comb filter, and sometimes null to center when panned. So my own sense of time isn't "bad". I thought, "well, maybe it's just askew over a period of time. Or the DM5 is randomly moving the output around depending on it's own resource requirements", blah blah. I'm tired, or it's caffeine, or comet Lula, or black helicopters. CUTTING THIS LONG STORY SHORT: Ended up going back to CEP. Which meant - setting my MOTU 24 I/O (424 based) card into WDM mode. In CEP, I'm rock solid. Go back to Reaper, track to the metronome in ASIO mode. Switch it to WDM/MME, track twice to the metronome. Play them all back after time-aligning the downbeat of the 2nd measure (to be safe): the ASIO track, after about a minute, has drifted out by about 80+ms, relative to the WDM/MME tracks, which are tight with each other. What's worse is that it seems *random*, like it's oscillating almost, but in an erratic fashion. I also notice "hey.... I seem to once again have control over the "feel" of the drum parts recorded with WDM". So now I'm thinking: I've got to run Reaper with WDM drivers. I'm also thinking "all the time I've spent trying to get guitar tracks perfect - a few measures at a time - thinking it was me, *it probably wasn't me being erratic after all*.... Double checked: it's almost random, like the ASIO setting has an oscillator that comes and goes - but when I track WDM it's fine, does what it should do. So at least I'm thinking "I'm not crazy", but WTF am I missing with ASIO??? I have a Line6 XTLive hooked up - thought that might be doing something, even though I don't ave it's ASIO drivers running concurrently; could just having them installed frak up the timing? What should I be looking for? There's a gazillion things online about MIDI syncing going out, but "????" Questions: The MOTU site mentions applications should be "ASIO 2 compliant" - is Reaper? I can't find anything on "ASIO 2"; Is there such thing as CPU clock timing drift? Are there default buffering I need to switch off, or "something"???? How do ASIO drivers manage to get time-dependent function calls to "line up" with buffer over runs? / note: I would never have discovered this doing loop back tests. It's locks with itself, so it appears it's correcting output timing with recording timing? // I seem to have to "fight" the metronome in ASIO mode, which makes me think it's drifting on playback; WDM it feels solid, do I'm thinking it's either playing back with random stutters, or it's stuttering what's being recorded a bit, or both??? /// Trying to be happy that's I'm not crazy and can just use WDM mode, but... ahrgghghgh.. //// The only other explanation is that maybe I'm just psychologically ASIO averse; except I'm not sure that's in the DSM IV (maybe it should be in V?). ///// ahhrgrghrghrhr

Try this: Preferences:Audio:Recording: Use audio driver reported latency. Just remove the tick for this setting. I have found the same problem with the recording and this solved the problem!!! Dimi :)

I've had that checked....

It sounds like your interface and card are not LOCKED I.E. what is the MASTER , I set my RME to master and A/D's to slave !!! this is where you will most likely see drift you should also hear clicks at times as well ( not always ) check your physical setup. LAter Buzz

the things that drive you nuts... 

Hi. Is it you or is it the machine? A question you are sick of dealing with. I have almost gotten to the point where I can imagine myself going back to using a four track, at least it worked like it said on the box. and it was cheap at the time! I have issues with reaper, and Acid, and FL studio etc etc. Frankly every ap has some odd thing going on with it. Sure it's hard to make an ap that is rock solid but then is it? Most users of aps have no idea what is going on under the hood. I don't. It sucks. What is the ap doing? What is the OS doing? What is the computer doing? What is your outboard gear doing? Most of us have no idea. If we have a problem or there is a conflict we are just pissing into the wind if we try to solve it. The only thing to do is just deal with it. Which can cramp styles somewhat. I don't trust my ap. it sounds funny. Sure I have a budget sound card but can anyone prove that that is the problem? I suspect not. Or then maybe it's just me. darn it. Where do we go from here? I ain't no audio engineer but I sure as hell am sure that when I drop the bass line in "something" goes a bit strange. the Last test I did had Three samples and no FX. zip. cpu was at 2%... Maybe the ap is trying to pitch shift every thing to allow for user input latency and/or caffeine deficiency... Question: Why build a pitch shifter into the ap??? I for one am at no time going to change the BPM or pitch of a track I have started to record. that would be just insane. Can I get that bit removed from reaper??? and no stretching samples. or any sample fiddling. sound forge works fine... oh, sigh. Stop me, stop me, stop me.... R.

You really do need to just stop. If you have 4 different apps that don't work properly its time to look at the common points of your system for the issue. It really isn't that hard but you have to pay attention. I have built 3 machines running running three different daws and every combination was stable. I am hardly unique. There is obviously an issue that can be identified and fixed. 1st. What soundcard, and what driver are you using? Is it ASIO or wmd?

I have a MOTU 24 I/O on their 424 card base system, 2 gb Celeron 2ghz Intel PE based chipset WD drives. Having tried various latency settings it would appear Reaper ignores whether I have "automatically adjust" checked or not. The MOTU driver reports 12ms, which appears in the ballpark. The problem is that it appears to drift. I do a loop back of the click and it will be steady, but then it will go out by a few ms for a few beats, come back. Having futzed about with settings - graphic card acceleration off, blah blah... I thought I had "cured" it, but it's still there. Except when I use the WDM drivers. I also have a Line6 Pod XTLive. Which has it's own ASIO drivers. *It seems* that if I don't load the Line6 Gearbox applet after starting up, I don't have any problems. Plug the XTLive in, and the "ghost" returns. I think. So my "solution" for now is to revert to WDM, I've got stuff to do... Ahrg.

So it's a GearBox issue? I've certainly not had this problem. Sorry to hear that you have.

I don't know if it's a Gearbox issue. Seems like it is at the moment, but I'm sort of fed up at this point so I'm switching back to WDM.