Recording with FM3 into interface

[joshriggsFM3]

Are you recording your FM3 into a computer? If so, do not monitor through your computer. Connect your speakers to the FM3 and monitor directly from the FM3. That avoids any latency issues. There is no need for an external interface.

The problem isn't the input monitoring in and of itself. It is that the recorded track then needs to be manually adjusted for the latency. Multiply that by dozens of guitar tracks per song and that's one giant pain in the ass because of the latency.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Are you recording your FM3 into a computer? If so, do not monitor through your computer. Connect your speakers to the FM3 and monitor directly from the FM3. That avoids any latency issues. There is no need for an external interface.

I'm a bit confused. I have my monitors hooked up to the FM3, and the FM3 plugged into the PC via USB. How do I monitor separately?

 

[Riccardo Ros]

Are you recording your FM3 into a computer? If so, do not monitor through your computer. Connect your speakers to the FM3 and monitor directly from the FM3. That avoids any latency issues. There is no need for an external interface.

I think he refers to the latency when recording in a DAW.
I'm facing the same issue. I use the FM3 as the main sound card and I had to figure out the latency (using the metronome routing trick) and compensating in the DAW when recording (there are different threads on this topic)

 

[Riccardo Ros]

I'm a bit confused. I have my monitors hooked up to the FM3, and the FM3 plugged into the PC via USB. How do I monitor separately?

He refers to the monitor inside the DAW.
When you arm the guitar track in the DAW you should not monitor it (because you are monitoring through the Out 1 of the FM3) otherwise you'll hear the real-time monitor + your daw monitor back to the FM3 (whit the latency applied, a sort of flanger effect)

 

[SiggyCertified]

He refers to the monitor inside the DAW.
When you arm the guitar track in the DAW you should not monitor it (because you are monitoring through the Out 1 of the FM3) otherwise you'll hear the real-time monitor + your daw monitor back to the FM3 (whit the latency applied, a sort of flanger effect)

Thank you, this makes more sense. Oddly enough I remember playing around with "Low Latency Monitoring" within my ProTools, yet I also remember it not turning off the monitoring through the DAW itself. Which I guess would be a ProTools issue @ that point.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Follow up: Tested this again. Low Latency did not fix the issue, so I muted the track, and it's recording at a delay. This is definitely an issue with the FM3 itself as an interface. After doing some small digging, I read some threads that lead to a TGP post about Cliff stating the USB delay is a known issue and a top priority of needing to fix, but this was back in 2020. Does anyone @ all know of anything I might be doing wrong? Or an internal setting within the FM3 that may fix the issue?

 

[GlennO]

It works fine, there is nothing that needs to be fixed.


When recording an FM3 and monitoring direct (which is how you should be monitoring), latency is irrelevant. You will need to set a recording offset in your DAW preferences of course, but whether the FM3 has low or high latency doesn’t matter in this scenario. Just be sure to turn off monitoring in your DAW. And no audio interface is needed.

This is important but is widely misunderstood. It would help avoid confusion if it was covered in the FM3 and AxeFX iii manual.

 

[SiggyCertified]

It works fine, there is nothing that needs to be fixed.


When recording an FM3 and monitoring direct (which is how you should be monitoring), latency is irrelevant. You will need to set a recording offset in your DAW preferences of course, but whether the FM3 has low or high latency doesn’t matter in this scenario. Just be sure to turn off monitoring in your DAW. And no audio interface is needed.

This is important but is widely misunderstood. It would help avoid confusion if it was covered in the FM3 and AxeFX iii manual.

So I would need to access a setting that I haven't accessed with 5 other interfaces, just to fix the issue with this one unit, and that's your claim to saying it doesn't need to be fixed? Sorry, that's called a work around. I think that logic is rather flawed when the same exact company has been able to produce a product that pre-dates the current one I am using, with no issues when it comes to direct use as an interface. I do appreciate the attempt here, but it's just not working right.

 

[GlennO]

The problem isn't the input monitoring in and of itself. It is that the recorded track then needs to be manually adjusted for the latency. Multiply that by dozens of guitar tracks per song and that's one giant pain in the ass because of the latency.

This is a confusing subject, but no, the problem is not latency. The problem is recording alignment. That is related to latency, but it has nothing do with whether the FM3 has low latency or high latency.

In any case, no, there is no need to manually adjust your tracks. Just set the offset once in your preferences and forget it.

There are scenarios where it makes sense to use an audio interface in combination with an FM3, but doing so just to avoid setting that preference once in your DAW probably doesn't make sense.

 

[GlennO]

So I would need to access a setting that I haven't accessed with 5 other interfaces, just to fix the issue with this one unit, and that's your claim to saying it doesn't need to be fixed?

You were asking about a latency problem Cliff described last year which has since been fixed. The alignment problem you're now referring to is another matter entirely. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Yes, I fault FAS for this. FAS needs to fix this, or failing that, at least document in the user guide how to use this workaround to permit recording with the FM3. Otherwise, the steady stream of people who conclude the FM3 and AxeFX III are unsuitable for recording will continue.

 

[SiggyCertified]

You were asking about a latency problem Cliff described last year which has since been fixed. The alignment problem you're now referring to is another matter entirely. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Yes, I fault FAS for this. FAS needs to fix this, or failing that, at least document in the user guide how to use this workaround to permit recording with the FM3. Otherwise, the steady stream of people who conclude the FM3 and AxeFX III are unsuitable for recording will continue.

Gotcha, I had no idea. Thank you for clearing this up.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Alright. I need some help. So I tried to use the FM3 as a direct interface, only to discover that it has latency issues... so I went the interface route, with my (MOTU 828mk3) and I am still having a very very slight lag issue. Is there something I'm missing? At this point I feel like I can't record with my FM3 at all which is bumming me out.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Not too sure what may be happening. I had no issues with my Axe2. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GlennO]

Alright. I need some help. So I tried to use the FM3 as a direct interface, only to discover that it has latency issues... so I went the interface route, with my (MOTU 828mk3) and I am still having a very very slight lag issue. Is there something I'm missing?

By "lag", do you mean latency? Most people monitor direct to avoid the inevitable latency that occurs when recording digital devices. For that reason, any latency generally doesn't matter.

Or do you mean the misalignment of the recorded audio in your DAW? If that's what you mean, that has been discussed ad infinitum on the forum, so I don't know that there's anything that can be accomplished by beating that dead horse.

 

[SiggyCertified]

Disregard. The buffer size on my MOTU was simply too high. Now if anyone could tell me how to use the FM3 directly as an interface, without delay, that would be great.