Freakin Latency

[firewire]

my latency gets progressively worse as i load up a song. at the beginning everything is fine and i can play along with the metronome. As things progress and i add more layers to the track the latency gets worse and worse. Having Delay compensation on not does not help. i tried to use the tutorial for setting delay compensation (which got up to 13ms) but it doesn't seem to make any difference.
Its like the audio delay gets greater, all switching on the DC does is align the metronome with the audio, which does not seem to help with recording the midi.
I am a newbie so i'm hoping this is easily solved ?

[firewire]

i have moved the sound card now onto a different bus. This seems to have cured the delay for the Plugin delay compensation lesson. its now down to 0.2ms.

Here's the scenario. I have a track playing, 7 tracks of audio, 4 of midi.

switch on the metronome.
without delay compensation i can hear the audio is out of time with the metronome.
to test the keyboard latency i turn down the master volume to 0 and tap my midi keyboard in time with the metronome. the notes are in time with the metronome and recording right on the whole notes.

turn up the volume and i can hear the audio lagging behind the metronome.
I switch on the delay compensation. Now the metronome is in time with the music.
I try to record the midi on the beat as before but now the recorded notes are between a 32th and 16th behind the whole note.

Could it be the soundcard ?

also, i am using the latest ASIO drivers for the soundcard, buffer is 265 with no clicks or pops, 44100 sample rate

[Amaury]

i have moved the sound card now onto a different bus. This seems to have cured the delay for the Plugin delay compensation lesson. its now down to 0.2ms.

Here's the scenario. I have a track playing, 7 tracks of audio, 4 of midi.

switch on the metronome.
without delay compensation i can hear the audio is out of time with the metronome.
to test the keyboard latency i turn down the master volume to 0 and tap my midi keyboard in time with the metronome. the notes are in time with the metronome and recording right on the whole notes.

turn up the volume and i can hear the audio lagging behind the metronome.
I switch on the delay compensation. Now the metronome is in time with the music.
I try to record the midi on the beat as before but now the recorded notes are between a 32th and 16th behind the whole note.

Could it be the soundcard ?

also, i am using the latest ASIO drivers for the soundcard, buffer is 265 with no clicks or pops, 44100 sample rate

Hi,

Tell me, in the last part of your experiment, with delay compensation ON, when you record MIDI, does it play any instrument? IF not, and it is silent, then turn Monitor to OFF on the MIDI track, and you should get the expected result.

Regards,
Amaury

[firewire]

Thank you Amaury,
YES it is recording in the right place. but i can't hear it play as i record ?????


I did the test of recording midi on to two trax simutaneously, one with monitoring on, "Auto" the other to "Off". If i record without an instrument assigned to the midi tracks I get minimal latency( about 0.2ms which is what the Delay Compensation is set to), however when i assign an instrument i get alot (notes are recorded late by up to a 16th in a complex track) .
For some reason it only compensates when an instrument is assigned. Of course it only matters when you have an instrument assigned. Also is is variable depending on the amount of effects and instruments etc., the more complex a track gets, the more latency is produced.

I found this in another post too

2) turn monitoring off on tracks you are recording and use the sound cards mixer application to use direct monitoring. when you have monitoring turned on in Live, Live will record the latency as-well, keeping it off Live will trauncate the latent part.

I need to know how to direct monitor i think.
Any tips on how to do this with an M-Audio 2496 PCI ? Do i need a dual stereo output card ?

it seems like a lot of hassle to be able to record properly on a professional DAW. i like to layer up and experiment with diferent loops synths etc. it appears Ableton cannot handle it ?

[firewire]

Just wondering if buying a new audio interface will solve it ?

If i need to switch the monitoring to "off" how can i hear myself play ? Do i route the track to a separate output or something ? still, how can i hear myself play with monitoring off ?

With such large latency could it be a CPU or resource problem ? I have upgraded to a dual core.

[iain.morland]

If i need to switch the monitoring to "off" how can i hear myself play ? Do i route the track to a separate output or something ? still, how can i hear myself play with monitoring off ?

Answer: you don't! Welcome to Live's delay-by-design feature. As you'll see from following this link, it's not completely illogical behaviour, but it is different to all other DAWs.

• The track with monitoring OFF records what you play, but you can't hear it.
  
  The track with monitoring ON records what you hear, but not what you play.

It's possible to get used to the delayed MIDI recording if you have very low latency. But you have to retrain yourself from how you'd work with other DAWs.

In the thread to which I've linked, you'll see several of us have asked for this behavior to be optional.

Just wondering if buying a new audio interface will solve it ?

Nope! But it may of course reduce latency, which helps.

[firewire]

Hi Iain,
Thanks for that. I read Chris J's posts earlier but was just wondering if my problem was unique because the latency is so big. I just tried to record on the beat in a project that is running at 47% on CPU. With DC on I got 98ms of latency between notes recorded with monitoring on and with monitoring off . If this is to be expected with Ableton i can rest easy that it is only Ableton's weirdness and not say my soundcard or something else.
What do you do to combat this ?
100ms of latency makes it pretty much unplayable.

[iain.morland]

Ouch, I agree that does seem a ridiculous latency. It's hard to know what the cause is. What sample rate are you using? Although that might seem to reduce latency, it raises CPU of course.

Some other users have reported that adding tracks and effects to a set increases latency (irrespective of PDC). I've found that problem occasionally, but closing and reopening the set has resolved it.

What is the minimum latency in an empty set, according to the latency lesson? Is this predictable/repeatable? If so, then it sounds like you'll need to try and identify if a specific vst/vsti is upsetting Live.

However, as I said earlier, don't ever expect MIDI to record without delay while monitoring. It records what you hear, which is delayed by the audio latency.

[Nod]

Ouch, I agree that does seem a ridiculous latency. It's hard to know what the cause is. What sample rate are you using? Although that might seem to reduce latency, it raises CPU of course. Some other users have reported that adding tracks and effects to a set increases latency (irrespective of PDC). I've found that problem occasionally, but closing and reopening the set has resolved it.

Thanks for that tip, and your research, Iain - will try it next time I encounter the issue. I originally mentioned it here, and in other threads, but think I came to the wrong conclusions:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

However, as I said earlier, don't ever expect MIDI to record without delay while monitoring. It records what you hear, which is delayed by the audio latency.

Which is nonsensical given there will always be a delay in time before a signal is rendered. Hence it should record exactly what note-on messages are detected from the input and exactly when they are inputted - not the application's extrapolation of when it thinks it should be. Sorry if that seems like a pointless bitch, that has already been better covered in other threads, but unless this whole MIDI/monitoring mess is sorted for V7, the third revision in which these features are supposedly available, it really will be a lengthy consideration for me before upgrading

[firewire]

When i completed the latency compensation error test i got 0.2ms of latency.

it gets progressively worse as the project builds.

I'm using 44100 and 256 samples. I guess i should try and narrow it down to a VST if possible.
Thanks I'll post the results.

[firewire]

Well I had ambiguous results.

I managed to get 30 tracks running with my Moog Modular, PSP Nitro and A limiter on each one, CPU at 90%, clicks and pops but no significant latency. So it would seem that CPU load is not the issue.

I tried other plugs too but no discernible problems.

I struck problems when i loaded Impulse this one time. Then when i tried to create the problem with Impulse again i couldn't do it.

If i don't have synth in the channel i can record with minimal latency, I am using the test where i have two channels enabled to receive midi, one switched to "off" the other "Auto". Without a synth in the channels there is a little latency between the two, when i load a synth into each channel I get massive latency, mostly on the "Auto" track.

It happens tapping in notes with the qwerty keys too.
Any ideas ? Hard drive, soundcard, RAM ? (i Ran memtest86 on the RAM with no problems but have ordered 2GB extra)

[firewire]

I have run a Hard Drive test using HD Tach on both my drives and using the windows speed test in Device manager.

My C drive is 160GB, the HD Tach test ran at 217mb/s. The windows test at Burst 71.5mb/s and sustained speed at 71.5mb/s (theoretical limit at 300mb/s)

My library drive that i keep samples on is 250gb, it's HD Tach test ran at 129mb/s. the Windows test: Burst at 100.8mb/s and sustained at 50.7 (theoretical limit at 150mb/s)

the speed of the library drive is significantly lower that the root drive, could this be the problem ?

[firewire]

bump

[Amaury]

Which is nonsensical given there will always be a delay in time before a signal is rendered. Hence it should record exactly what note-on messages are detected from the input and exactly when they are inputted

Hi,

That is is not exactly true: there will always be a delay in time before the note is heard while monitoring. There won't be while playing back, because of Delay Compensation. Or did I misunderstand your statement?

Regards,
Amaury

[firewire]

Cheers