Axe-Fx III USB Audio Latency Troubleshooting

Guitarjon

Guitarjon

Fractal Fanatic
Hi guys,

I've run into a problem with my Axe FX III that I never had with my II or XL+ throughout the years.
When I record my Axe FX (while only monitoring through the Axe FX III itself, so monitoring turned off in my DAW which is Cubase) I'm noticing that the recorded parts are always recorded 'too late'.
So there seems to be a lag going on when recording.
This lag isn't huge, probably around 30 ms? I'm not sure if I'm reading Cubase correctly.
It's definitely audible though... (I made a screenshot in a later post to visualize the latency)

I have my Axe FX III set as my main soundcard and the samplerate of the session is of course 48khz.
I'm on Windows 10.

I have tried all the different latency settings in the ASIO driver panel but this doesn't seem to have any effect.
The recorded part always seems to have a lag, no matter what I do.

With my II and XL+, no matter how much latency I had set in the ASIO panel, my parts always recorded exactly in time.
When I play there isn't any latency/lag, only when I press play after I recorded the part.

Maybe I'm overlooking something or maybe I'm going something wrong?

Help would be much appreciated! :)

EDIT: I've done more testing and with different buffer settings. The latency seems to be around 30 ms consistently no matter what the buffer settings are. If I'm reading cubase correctly that is
 
Last edited:
yek said:
What's USB Buffer Size set to?
Click to expand...

I've tried all sorts of different settings, from 64 to 128 to 2048.
However, none of that used to matter with my XL+ or II.
Those settings only mattered for mixing, never for tracking.
With my old one I used to track with a buffer size of 2048, that wasn't a problem at all.
 
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Here are a few screenshots of my settings.
64 ms is very low though and I wouldn't feel comfortable tracking with such a low latency because often when I track I have plugins running like drum computers etc.
 

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I tried to reinstall the USB firmware but I'm getting an error:
 

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yek said:
That can happen. Keep trying until it takes, rebooting the Axe each time.
Click to expand...

Can't get it to work.... I tried like 10 times and it mostly gets stuck at about 2 or 5%.
Don't know if this has anything to do with my latency issues though....
 
This screenshot gives a good indication of the amount of latency I'm getting on the recorded parts.
The timeline above the track is set to 'seconds'.
 

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If you monitor through the DAW (software monitoring), do you hear the same latency?
If not, then the issue is with Cubase.
 
I tried a different DAW, same problem.
When I tried my old Line 6 UX2 interface there was no lag at all.
It seems to be an Axe FX III / Driver issue.
 
AFAIK there have been no similar reports.

- Try a reset.
- Tried WASAPI?
- Tried with Reaper?
 
If the driver isn't reporting the offset correctly, the recorded audio won't be in perfect time with previous (monitored) tracks.
Most DAWs offer a means to manually correct for this offset (just need to figure out how many samples).
Play a short high-transient sound (ie: stick-click) on one track... and physically patch it from output back to input... and record it onto a second track. Zoom into the two tracks... and see how many samples the second stick-click is off (relative to the first).
This is the amount of offset you'll want to (manually) enter in your DAW software.

Any time you switch audio interfaces, this is a good test to run.
 
Jim Roseberry said:
If the driver isn't reporting the offset correctly, the recorded audio won't be in perfect time with previous (monitored) tracks.
Most DAWs offer a means to manually correct for this offset (just need to figure out how many samples).
Play a short high-transient sound (ie: stick-click) on one track... and physically patch it from output back to input... and record it onto a second track. Zoom into the two tracks... and see how many samples the second stick-click is off (relative to the first).
This is the amount of offset you'll want to (manually) enter in your DAW software.

Any time you switch audio interfaces, this is a good test to run.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply!
Will try that out and report back!
 
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