Guitar playing through PC interface and usb headphones. HELP

Question

So for months I've taken a few hours out of my time to set up my audio interface (scarlett 2i2) and try to learn how to use a DAW (FL studio 11). I am trying to stream myself playing and need to have my microphone on my headset to be usable for discord and games etc. Issue I'm having is being able to hear what I'm playing without any latency.

I have my guitar directly inputted into the interface with inst on and direct off. I found that I can go into sound settings on windows 10 and have it set to where the focusrite sound card is being "listened to" through my usb headset. The problem is obviously the latency. I then went into FL audio settings to try and tinker with the buffer size and sample rate. Got it to where it read 1ms but still was sounding very slow and high in latency. I then understood that its most likely because of the "listening" aspect in windows and that I should be able to set an output to my usb headphones in FL to deter the input lag. Now the issue is I have no idea how to find that.

Basically I just want to be able to play my guitar through the scarlett with little to no latency and use my headset and microphone without having to input the headset into the scarlett. Any information on this would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Use ASIO driver instead of default Windows Audio drivers. You can try using ASIO4ALL.

Answer 2

A dedicated audio interface tends to be designed with a careful look towards latency, both with regard to hardware and drivers. The implied interface of USB headsets, not so much. Also using more than one soundcard (and a USB headset implies a soundcard, even though a rather low-specced one) means having more than a single sample rate clock, requiring clock compensation introducing further lag.

In other words, you need an analog headset you hook up directly with your soundcard. PC-style headsets with a single connector need to be split into microphone input and headphone output (there are cheap adapters for that), but that microphone input needs plugin power and is high-impedancy, meaning that you need a more expensive adapter converting phantom power into plugin power.

It may make more sense to add a separate headset microphone intended for musicians and ending in an XLR plug with phantom power (these days, they tend to actually come with a separate adapter) and more proper headphones.

Note that any kind of wireless setup has to use analog RF technology since digital transmission introduces additional latencies.