To reach this point, you should have just just connected your audio interface and all of your audio gear and instruments, and started the audio setup wizard as explained in this help article.
You should now be looking at Step 2 of the audio setup wizard. Because we cannot buy, analyze, and produce documentation for every audio interface made by every vendor, we have produced a "general instructions" help article for Step 2 for all JamKazam users who have purchased and are using an audio interface for which we do not have specific instructions.
Start Step 2 by clicking the Audio Input Device list box (pictured below with arrow).
You see the list box open, and you need to scroll down and scan the list box options until you see the option for your audio interface. There are two things to look for here:
- First, look for text that matches some portion of your audio interface vendor and product name. For example, in the screenshot below, the maker of this audio interface is "Behringer" and the audio interface model is the "UMC202HD". You can see the UMC portion of the interface name in the correct option to be selected (pictured below with arrow).
- Second, look for "ASIO" because it is highly likely that you are using a Windows ASIO driver for your interface to get the best performance. Avoid any option that says "WDM", as these options will deliver poor performance.
There should be just one single option in the list that is the ASIO software driver for your specific audio interface. Find and select that one.
You will now see the JamKazam app test your audio interface settings for 5 seconds, and you will see "Test Results" reported on the right side of the screen (pictured below). You should see a reported latency value - for example in the screenshot below it's 4.17ms (i.e. approx. 4 milliseconds, which is four one-thousandths of a second), which is what the Windows system is reporting back to the JamKazam app. Unfortunately, the Windows system does not do a good job of reporting back actual/accurate latency values - more on that in a minute.
To make sure you are getting the lowest possible latency (i.e. the fastest performance) from your audio interface, you will next want to click the orange ASIO Settings button (pictured below with arrow).
You should now see the dialog box that controls your audio interface's software driver and the settings for your audio interface. This was built by the vendor from whom you purchased your interface - not by JamKazam - so these settings are all different from one interface to the next. What you want to look for in your interface settings is a control often called "buffer size" or "sample size", and you want to set this to its lowest possible value. For one example interface, you can see (pictured below with arrow) a buffer size control that is set to "8 samples". If you were to click this list box open, you would find other options for 16 samples, 32 samples, 64 samples, and so on. 8 samples is the smallest value, so it will yield the least latency. Again, try to find this control in your own audio interface settings, and set it as low as you can.
As a word of warning, there is also often a control for selecting sample rate - with typical values of 44.1KHz, 48KHz, 96Khz, and so forth. Do not change this control. This is not the control that affects your latency.
Once you have found and set the buffer size or sample size control to its lowest possible value, click the "X" at the top right corner to close the interface settings dialog box. You are now back to viewing Step 2 of the audio setup wizard. Click the orange "Resync" button (pictured below with arrow). This will cause your new settings to take effect.
You now have a couple of choices to finish up. If you have an older Windows computer that is somewhat outdated and not very powerful, we'd advise that you click the orange Next button to move forward to Step 3 of the audio setup wizard. If you have a relatively modern and reasonably powerful Windows computer, then we'd advise that you make one more optimization, by clicking the Frame Size list box (pictured below with arrow). Open the Frame Size list box, and pick the 1ms frame size option.
At this point, we recommend that you verify with your own ears that the audio interface settings you have chosen are working well. To do this, put on the headphones connected to your audio interface and grab your instrument and/or mic. Play your instrument and/or sing - do what you're going to actually do musically - and listen to how the audio sounds in your headphones. You should hear the audio clearly, and it should sound very good/clean. You should not hear any bad audio artifacts - like crackling, snapping, dropouts, or other audio glitches.
If you can't hear anything at all, you have something set up wrong. First, try clicking the orange Resync button. If you still don't hear anything, check that your gain knobs are turned up on your audio inputs. Check that any on/off switches on your microphones or instruments are set to on. Check that your headphone volume knob is turned up. Generally fiddle with all of these kinds of things to make sure everything is connected properly, turned on, and turned up. You can also check that you don't have a microphone or instrument port set to "line" level.
Please note that you may only hear your audio in one headphone, not in stereo in both headphones, at this point in the setup wizard. Don't worry about this. We'll get this sorted out in Step 3 next.
If your audio sounds clean and good, then you are done with Step 2 of the wizard. Please click the orange Next button (pictured below with arrow) to move forward to Step 3 of the wizard, and then click here for the Step 3 help doc instructions.
