I don't know about doing this with the Zoom H2N but I've most certainly done exactly this with my Firewire-410.

1: You probably need to be using ASIO.
2: You use Vegas's buss and mixing capabilities.
3: Can you assign the output on the Zoom to a Vegas output buss?
4: If the answer to 3: is yes then you create a suitable mix in Vegas using busses.

What's confusing is most audio devices including my 410 have their own internal mixing capability, to do what you want to do you need to ignore that.

Bob..

I'm closer!

I don't understand busses very well. I can get the H2N feed to play through the speakers until I hit play, then it stops :-(

Any suggestions on exactly how to run the buss? I start with instrumental on one track, the H2N on another armed for recording...then how exactly should I run the bus?

I just bought an H2n a month ago and hadn't gotten around to trying it as a USB mic. Your post was a good excuse to play with it a bit.

As I expected, all the issues in recording while playing are buried in various Windows dialog boxes and not inside of Vegas. It took me over five minutes to get it working, but in the end I was able to do exactly what you are trying to do (assuming I am understanding your request).

1. I put some music on the timeline.
2. I added a second track, and armed it for recording.
3. I put the Vegas play cursor at the beginning of the timeline, and pressed the recording button and then the playback button.
4. When Jimmy Dean started singing ("Big Bad John"), I sang along and it recorded my voice. When I played it back, I heard myself singing (very badly) along with the late Mr. Dean.

The only thing I didn't do was to plug headphones into my speaker jack, but I'm sure that wouldn't have changed anything (although it might on your computer because some systems have a "headphone detection" capability).

I wish I could give you some more help, other than to let you know that Vegas is capable of doing this (or at least was capable: I did this using Vegas 7, and then repeated the test on Vegas 10.0e). I can at least let you know, on my Windows XP system, the things I had to do to get the thing working.

The most important was to make sure to specify the H2n as the recording device, but NOT as the playback device:



Obviously, on your computer, the playback will probably be something other than "SB X-Fi."

I also had to close Vegas and then re-open it after I made changes at the system level.

I then went to the Vegas Preferences and under the Audio Device tab, I made sure that "Microsoft Sound Mapper" was chosen (which it already was).

I think that was about all it took. If you have another question, I may be able to help, but as I said above, a lot of the issues here probably have to do with your specific sound card and Windows version, etc.

[edit]I forgot to mention that I was rather pleased with the quality of the sound I got from the H2N (using the forward-facing XY mode). It certainly isn't the best mic in my kit, but it's plenty good enough for field work, which is how I plan to use it. My only slight problem is that it doesn't seem to pad line level inputs as much as it should (although I think it does autodetect line level and provide some padding), and therefore requires slight attenuation of line signals in order to avoid distortion. That means I'll probably give up a little S/N when using it to get audio from a soundboard (one of my other applications for it), but I can live with that for my work.

Forget about busses for the moment as you don't need really need them for this.
What you need to do on the track that you're going to record the H2n on is to Enable Input Monitoring. The manual explains this.

Bob.

"What you need to do on the track that you're going to record the H2n on is to Enable Input Monitoring."

Bob, I tried this in the Windows Sound configuration settings when I was doing Camtasia recordings for some training videos. What I experienced was about a quarter second delay in the sound from when I spoke, until I heard my voice in the headphones. This was way too disorienting to be of any use.

What you need to do on the track that you're going to record the H2n on is to Enable Input Monitoring. Ah, I missed that: you want to be able to hear sidetone (as we called it in telephony) so the person hears their own voice, coming from the microphone, mixed into the headphone playback.

I made the change that Bob (farss) described, but initially only changed the setting in the Advanced section of the Audio Device preferences. As it turns out, this is not enough. Once you have made this change, you arm the track for recording and, after you do this, a new icon appears on the track header. If you don't enable the setting in the Advanced section of the preferences, this icon merely has "Stereo, Left, Right" as options. However, once you enable the preference, this now has an additional setting to monitor the recording. Once I did this, I was able to hear myself along with Jimmy Dean, as I was recording.

However, I think there might have been a very, very small delay. It was certainly nothing like 1/4 second (250 msec) delay that Gary reports, but it might have been something like 25 msec (maybe even less than that). I think it would still be usable, although I didn't try wearing headphones. Obviously any sort of major delay is going to drive the talent crazy.

There is nothing you can do about a delay because that is a function of how fast the computer can digitize the USB incoming signal and convert it to analog electrical signals to send to the headphones.


[edit]Removed online help reference because it was irrelevant.

I've tried using H2N via usb and 3.5mm jack. Both get same result, but it only works for me when I use an input bus. I can hear the mic via my speakers until I push record, then I only hear the instrumental track. Here is a collage pic of my various settings.

http://s17.postimg.org/gf86j5ldr/mic.jpg

BTW, I get that delay as well. I see a setting there for Track Buffering and it is set to 0.47 seconds. If I lower that will I get rid of the delay?

ASIO drivers are available for the Zoom "H" series recorders.

Loading them may or may not disable the WMD drivers. If it does then you'll have to hope you can assign the output to the headphone socket on the Zoom.

If all else fails I guess you could try ASIO4ALL drivers. Be aware once you start installing audio drivers things can get messy.

Also worth a mention that how all the audio side of Vegas works got changed dramatically between V9 and 11/12.

Bob.

Simple answer is yes. The requirement is that you must use ASIO drivers for your audio device. ASIO drivers enable software input monitoring.

The other requirement is that the audio device has both input and output. This device is used for the main output of Vegas and the monitored input is "mixed" with this output.

There will always be a delay - latency - involved. The monitored input will be at least one sample buffer of audio late in the mixed output. How much delay is dependent on the audio device and its ASIO drivers. Typically the ASIO driver will allow for this buffer size to be controlled, but it depends on the vendor and its drivers.

ASIO drivers are for a single physical device - or multiple of the same device or family of devices. This means that you cannot use device X for output and device Y for input.

ASIOForAll: this driver can be used for those devices that do not have native ASIO drivers or to combine two physically different devices. It allows you to use the input of device X with the output of device Y to build a virtual ASIO device. However, this virtualization will introduce additional latency. It can also introduce clock problems between two physical devices. Unless one device is the master clock of an audio system, there is no way to assure that both devices' audio clocks are exactly the same. If device x has a sample clock that works at exactly 44.1 kHz, but device Y's clock runs at 44.12 kHz, then the two devices will never be sample for sample accurate.

I don't have the Zoom hardware, so I cannot help you with its ASIO drivers and whether it can be used as you need.

Peter

[I]"The requirement is that you must use ASIO drivers for your audio device. ASIO drivers enable software input monitoring."[/I]

Worked just fine on this office PC with V11 and no ASIO drivers installed.
My biggest problem getting it to work was the V11 manual gives the wrong instructions about how to enable input monitoring.

Bob.

@farss

I don't see how. The code doesn't allow for anything other than ASIO drivers to do track software input monitoring.

How are you setting this up?
Where in the manual are you looking?

Are you attempting to use Input Bus for monitoring? (That is not the same thing as software input monitoring and will incur latency and other problems.)

Peter

Worked just fine on this office PC with V11 and no ASIO drivers installed.Ditto here. NO ASIO drivers, and I was able to do exactly what the OP requested.

However, I only tested on Vegas 7 & Vegas 10. Except for the very slight (10-20 msec) delay in hearing yourself, it worked perfectly. I have no idea how you can get rid of that delay. Every digital device I have has a similar latency. In my TV set, the problem is solved by delaying the audio or video so the two sync up. However, they are then BOTH later than the input signal. In the case of monitoring your own voice, you don't have that luxury: the audio must have no latency. There are so many processes in the chain between the H2n and the headphones that it would be very difficult to pin down what process is causing that problem: the H2n digitizing; the Windows USB driver; the sound card driver; or Vegas.

P.S. Here is the Vegas dialog, showing the setup I used:



On the "Audio device type" setting where it shows "Microsoft Sound Mapper" one of the other choices is "Creative ASIO." I guess I could choose that and see if anything different happens, but I don't have time at the moment.

@johnmeyer

So with the set up you show, you can enable track input monitoring on an audio track?!?

On my system - Vegas 9 thru 12 is what I tested - only when ASIO drivers are active in Vegas does them option to enable track input monitoring appear.

(I am looking at the code, and there is no way to enable track input monitoring unless ASIO drivers are active in Vegas.)

I am missing something is exactly what you are doing.

Peter

So with the set up you show, you can enable track input monitoring on an audio track?!? (I am looking at the code, and there is no way to enable track input monitoring unless ASIO drivers are active in Vegas.)Here is a very crude demo. Hopefully it will provide enough information that you will be able to either see how I am able to do what I'm doing, or perhaps it will reveal that we are talking about two different things.

One possible point of confusion in the demo: you will hear my narration, which I added after I shot the video. However, you will also briefly hear my voice when I demonstrate recording while playing back a music track. That voice is my voice playing back (being "monitored") during the actual recording. It sounds a little hollow because, despite my sound box, some of the audio from the speakers was feeding back to the microphone. I was too lazy to hook up some headphones.

@SonyPCH

[I]"Are you attempting to use Input Bus for monitoring? (That is not the same thing as software input monitoring and will incur latency and other problems.)"[/I]

I only know what I was trying to achieve, not how I was going to do it.
You are correct, I used input buss monitoring.

Until you are asked this question it was never clear in my head that there were two ways to get the same thing done. On my other PC with the M-Audio Firewire 410 connected Yes, I use the 410 to do the mixing, the backing track is sent to a buss routed to the 410 which is mixed with the 410s mic input to a bus in the 410 which feeds the 410's headphone outputs. Zero latency is then possible.
You have no idea how much confusion over many years you just cleared up, thanks.

Problem is I don't think the H2n even with it's ASIO drivers installed has the capability to do this so the OP will have to use Input Bus monitoring to do what he wants.


Bob.

Zoom ASIO drivers working great here, and yes, input monitoring is active.

@johnmeyer

Vegas 7. I hadn't even considered that version. We did allow through the advanced page to allow input monitoring with Wave/Mapper. (I haven't seen that dialog with that option for long time<g>.)

If it works for you, great. However, for all of the issues I mentioned, it is "problematic' at best due to the latency and clock issues that can occur.

For versions 10 and up, I am not seeing that option available.

Peter

@farss

I never considered using Input Busses for record monitoring specifically. Not really the intent, but reasonable for such a use. FWIW, the intent was to allow for

1. recording FX by placing them on the input bus.
2. external hardware fx can be bussed into the mix (and also the reason for real-time rendering in Vegas.)

Latency and clock issues will be problematic. If it works for the OP's need, then that is great.

ASIO is still the best way to achieve software input monitoring. Low latency and sample accurate lock between input and output (as well as ASIO drivers allowing us to align input vs output by telling us the latency in samples between input and output) make it the best solution.

Peter

[I]"Zoom ASIO drivers working great here, and yes, input monitoring is active."[/I]

OK but can you send a buss to the headphone output on the Zoom or any other audio outputs whilst in record?

I read the documentation on the Zoom H series ASIO drivers and there's no mention of this capability.

Bob.