Getting Rid Off Mic Delay

[DjGuji]

Hi

I have been for the past two nights trying to figure out the MIC delay in my headphones when I speak. This kind of makes me sound like a drunk as I start slurring while talking.

I currently have Voicemeeter and Proppfrexx running on a laptop and have set up the audio in Proppfrexx with the "No external Mixer, internal Microphones (extra Monitoring) option.

The settings are as follows and as in the pic attached:

OUT - Outputs to one of the Voicemeeter Channels
MON - Outputs to a 7.1ch USB Sound Card which has speakers connected to them
PFL - Outputs a o Voicemeeter channel using a virtual cable
MIC - My mic is a USB condenser MIC.
INP - This is mapped to a Voicemeeter output and is used to bring sounds from browsers or other apps through.

My headphones connect directly to the laptop as Voicemeeter is set to use the laptop soundcard as the hardware out.

Everything seem to be working fine except for the couple of milliseconds delay.

I have turned off SND2 on all channels as well.

I am looking for some guidance in trying to get rid off this slight delay and to stop sounding like a drunk.

[radio42]

As you correctly mentioned, latency is key here! See here for a detailed explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latency_(audio)
A latency of around 10ms or below is typically not noticeable.

The most important part is the audio driver, a good audio card typically comes with an ASIO driver, which ensures a really good latency around 10ms or below, for example as provided by professional equipment.

When using the standard WDM or WASAPI driver model (esp. in shared mode) you are typically at around 30ms or above; when adding additional things like the voicemeter driver in between might add more milliseconds on top.
You recognize this by the noticeable delay of your MIC in your headphone.

A solution, if your equipment doesn't come with its own ASIO driver might be https://www.asio4all.org

Even if the WASAPI driver in exclusive mode might reduce the latency, but I rarely found a system performing as good as ASIO on a PC - but give it a try, as in WASAPI mode you can configure the exclusive mode and play with the Buffer size and update Period.
Note, that WDM isn't even supported anymore on Windows 10, but is emulated by WASAPI here in shared mode, which typically results in around 50ms.

[DjGuji]

Thanks Bernd for the feedback.

I will try the WASAPI driver and see if that makes a difference.

I have installed ASIO4ALL but right now can get my head around how to set that up correctly.

Something I should note is that I loaded Proppfrexx on another laptop that has Realtek sound card with the exact same setup, might be with WASAPI and I have zero latency and no MIC delay in my headphones. Which is really strange

[DjGuji]

Hi Bernd

So just a quick update, while doing some testing.

When on TalkOver or TalkUser, the Monitor channel get muted as per the design and when I talk on the MIC I get a delay in my headphones which is going through my default sound card. What I did do was unmuted the Monitor channel and low and below no delay on that set of speakers or headphones as per my testing.

Do I have something mixed up here?

[radio42]

I assume, that this is just by coincident and the way you are testing resp. your mixer was setup initially.
Talkover and Talkuser doesnt touch any buffer or recording/inout processing!
Instead, the Input mixer channel is simply unmuted resp. muted.

Over time the input and the output buffer will get filled up during digital processing.

As said, please use ASIO for low latency results and even try without any additional virtual sound device, like Voicemeeter!