Getting Zero Latency vocal recording THROUGH a daw with PODHD500x

[jonluther7]

Hi all,

 

I am a musician (like most of you), and I am wondering if it's possible to route vocals THROUGH a daw without having them go out of the POD and straight to the PA (at all). What I mean to say is, the vocals are processed by the POD and sent directly to the DAW, and unless you arm a track in the DAW you cannot hear them. Is this possible? Big thanks.

[Rewolf48]

Yes (but not zero latency as the USB interface is involved) - the USB Audio Driver has an option for hardware monitoring, which by default is turned up, but if you want to insert <<stuff>> between the end of the HD audio chain and the final audio output from the HD you can turn it down to zero.

 

See the "USB Audio" chapter in the Advanced Manual - the setting you need to change is the "Hardware Monitor Level"

 

Now the processed  audio from the HD appears in the Input in the DAW, while the only output from the HD audio output will be whatever you direct into it in the DAW.

 

This is actually a very good way to do all sort of things, such as using a Laptop as an extension FX processor! Most DAW and dedicated VST hosts will take input from an audio device and process it and then output it to the audio device, so you can insert as many VST effects as your laptop can cope with into the audio chain and still have them come out of the HD audio outputs. One such use is to test things like Cab Impulse Responses to see if you prefer them over the built in ones.

If you also connect the Laptop with MIDI then it is possible to control the VST from an HD500. (or to control the HD500 from sequences running on the laptop)

 

The only downsides are 1 ) it does introduce a bit of latency compared with hardware only and 2) the USB connection is not stage rugged so there is a real danger that the singer dancing around will destroy the USB socket if the cable gets pulled hard from the wrong direction.