David, just found your response and thank you so much for your help. Your explanation is very easy to understand and I will do more experimenting. Is the sincing of tracks supposed to change as you enter numbers in the latency correction box or does it only apply when you record your next track. I ask this because when I enter any numbers to change the latency in the correction box as well as the latency buffer box, the time between the 2 click tracks does not change and they don’t seem to get closer to matching up. once again I just want to say that It’s so nice to find a list where folks don’t treat you like a dummy when you ask questions so thanks everyone for working together in a professional manner. Steve From: David Bailes Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 6:39 AM To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: still wrestling with latency and correcting it, help please Hi Steve, I'm replying to the comments and questions that you had with the method in the jaws guide. In the section "find the position of a click track in the recorded track": 1. It doesn't matter which tracks are selected. 2. You say that you get no sound when using entries under M but when using entries under the S I get the first beat. I think that sounds ok - the clicks only last about 16 seconds, so if you move the cursor to 1 minute, and then play, you won't hear anything. After you've done step 4, then the cursor should be at 1 second. So if the start selection control is the focus and you press insert + up arrow, Jaws should read 00h00m01.000s. If you've set the latency correction to 0, then when you playback, you should find that time to the first click is less than the spacing between the remainder of the clicks, which is a second. Is this the case? Now all you have to do is find out the time of this first click, and you do this by gradually moving the cursor later in time, so the time to the first click gets shorter and shorter. To do this, move to the 10 ms digit in the selection start control. You can do this by pressing end to move to the last digit, which is the 1 ms digit, and then pressing left arrow to move to the 10 ms digit. Now each time you press up arrow this moves the cursor 10 ms to the right. So if you go round the loop of moving the cursor the right and playing back to hear when the first click occurs, you should find that the first click occurs sooner and sooner. You want to adjust the cursor position so the first click occurs immediately when you start playback. You can then read the cursor position by pressing insert + up arrow. Say that the position is 00h00m01.160s. In this case there's a latency of 160ms. In the audacity preferences, you enter the correction as a negative number (perhaps a little confusing). Since the original correction was zero, all you have to do is set the correction to -160. Concerning your comment about the original click track being muted. The clicks in the original click track occur at 0,1,2,3s and so on, - precisely known times, so that it doesn't matter that the original track is muted. All you need to find out is the time of the recorded click relative to those fixed points. let me know how you get on, David. On Monday, 24 March 2014, 18:36, Steve Schnelle <papaschnelle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I have some time off of work and promised myself that I am GOING to get this latency adjustment thing worked out with Audacity. I can’t be that stupid, and just think I’m missing one little thing that is screwing me up. This will be a rather long email as I’m going to include the parts of the Audacity manual and the guide with Jaws as I am a screenreader user. I can’t thank you all enough in advance for your help and patience and just have to say that I am missing the simplicity of my 4 track reel to reel at this time. If anyone takes on this endeavor, and feels that they want to take the time, they are welcomed to call me by phone or email me privately. Just respond to papaschnelle@xxxxxxxxxxx privately. Once again thanks for any help and here goes. For starters I am running windows XP and Jaws 13 along with Audacity 2.4 at this time. Here are the steppes plus comments that I took to adjust latency. In my preferences menu under recording, play other tracks while recording new was checked and the next checkbox about listening while recording was unchecked. The manual states to set the buffer for latency at around 100 so that’s where its set and my correction is set at 0. This is what it shows even after generating click and recording the click on track 2. From Audacity with Jaws Generate a click track 1.. Choose Click Track from the Generate menu. 2.. The second control is the Tempo [beats per minute] edit box, and its default value is 120. Type 60, and then press Tab twice to move to the next edit box. 3.. The Beats per measure [bar] edit box has a default value of 4. Type in the number 1, and then press Enter to press the default OK button. 4.. The click track is created. The track is initially selected, and a time range is selected which includes all the audio. (okay, I did that successfully) Record the click track To record the click track being played back through your headphones, you'll obviously need to take them off temporarily. If you're using a separate microphone, rather than a headset microphone, then position it close to the headphones so that it can pick up the clicks. Press R to start the recording, and then press Spacebar to stop the recording after a handful of clicks. (I recorded the click by holding a microphone up to my speaker) With the first track still being the focus, press Shift + U to mute it, and then playback the recorded track. If the clicks are very quiet compared to Jaws, then amplify the track: (had no problem with this, it was loud enough) Find the position of a click in the recorded track The following instructions describe how to find the position of the recorded click which corresponds to the click which occurs at 1 second in the generated track, and then update Audacity's latency correction. It's assumed that the original track is still muted from when you checked the level of the recorded track above. (should either track be selected at this time other than track 1 being muted?) 1.. Press Home to set both the selection start and selection end/length spin boxes in the selection bar to zero. 2.. Press Ctrl + F6 to move to the selection bar. Tab to the End/Length radio buttons, and make sure that the Length option is selected. (it is and, snap to checkbox is unchecked) 3.. Then Tab to the Selection Start spin box, and change the format to hh:mm:ss + milliseconds using its context menu. (done) 4.. To set the selection start to 1 second, press End to move to the last digit (milliseconds), press Left Arrow three to move to the seconds digit, and then press Up Arrow to increment it to one. 5.. Press Spacebar to listen to the first few clicks. There are two cases: if the recorded click is later than the original click at 1 second, then time to the first click is much less than the one second spacing of the remaining clicks; if the recorded click is earlier than original click, then the time to the first click is roughly the same as the one second spacing between the remaining clicks. Finding the position of the recorded click, and modifying Audacity's latency correction is described for these two cases in the following steps. (I get no sound when using entries under the M but when using entries under the S I get the first beat.) 6.. To find the position of the recorded click when it's later than the original click, go round the loop of incrementing the selection start by 10 milliseconds and then pressing Spacebar to check the time to the first click. When you've just gone past the click, it will suddenly change to roughly a second. Decrement the selection start by 10 milliseconds so that you can still hear the first click almost immediately, and then press Insert + Up Arrow to read the number of milliseconds. Adjust the latency correction by subtracting this number from it. For example, if the initial correction was -130ms, and the recorded click was 40ms late, then the latency correction should be changed to -170ms. (I’m sorry, but I am a bit confused in this part because my correction in preferences is set to zero at this time and buffer at 100) 7.. To find the position of the recorded click when it's earlier than the original click, go round the loop of decrementing the selection start by 10 milliseconds, and then pressing Spacebar to check the time to the first click. When you move to just before the click, or during it, the click will suddenly sound immediately. Press Up Arrow, followed by Down Arrow to leave the time unchanged, but to get Jaws to read the number of milliseconds. Subtract this number from 1000 to get the number of milliseconds by which the recorded click was early. Then adjust the latency correction by adding this number to it. For example, if the initial correction was -130ms and the recorded click was 20ms early, then the latency correction should be changed to -110ms. (I am still confused because I can’t tell how one can identify whether the recorded click is before or after the generated click if the generated click is muted. As I move up the amount of digits in the entries in selection start under S, it just seems to decrease the count of clicks heard. For example I might hear 12 clicks at the (00s) setting and then as I move up to (09S) I might only hear 4 or 5 clicks before the sound stops. I can’t get any negative numbers, it only goes back to zero when using the up and down arrow keys. Also, if my correction is set to 0 in the preferences menu do you use the formula discussed above as far as adding or subtracting numbers in the latency correction tab. I know you can enter negative numbers in this area. Also I don’t see anything after this section that tells how to check your work and adjust settings to correct for latency. I also tried the method from the manual using a loop-back cable but that was unsuccessful as well. Here’s what I did. Set the Latency Correction to 0 (zero). a.. Leave the Audio to Buffer amount at its default value. (that was 100 b.. Click OK. The Audio to Buffer amount will affect latency, but the effect will vary between systems. 100 milliseconds is a safe value that will not put too much load on the CPU. Too low a value may put too much load on the CPU causing dropouts in the recording. If you are feeling adventurous you can repeat this test with different values for Audio to Buffer. But in the end you should settle on a value for both Audio to Buffer and Latency Correction and leave them there. Again Snap to was unchecked and I had the combo box set to length, all settings the same as in previous trial. Zoom in so you can see one of the clicks in the top track and its delayed version on the bottom track. Using the Selection Tool drag a selection starting at the start of the click in the top track and ending at the start of the delayed click in the second track. You should see something like this (your numbers will likely be different): (don’t know how the zoom works for this exercise.) It tells you that you will see numbers in the boxes under selection start but mine just show H00M00S00) Checking the result Delete the second track by clicking the close box X in its Track Control Panel. Click the Zoom to Fit button to see the entire click track. Click in the Track Control Panel of the remaining track to select it, then click the Record button. After the recording is finished Audacity will apply the latency Correction by pushing the newly-recorded track back by the Latency Correction amount. Note the two arrows at the left end of the second track - they are warning you that latency correction has been applied and part of the recorded track has been pushed left so that it starts before 0 seconds. This is OK, it is what we wanted to happen. The arrows are there to remind you that latency correction has been applied, just in case that's not what you wanted. (I know this is a visual test for latency correction but seemed to have some good explanation.) I hope you can understand what I've tried to say in this email. Thanks again, Steve.