The MIDI deal-breaker in Live (?)

[klagga]

I´ve recently found out in KvR about an issue in Live that I would like to get clear (sorry if it has been beaten to death, but I did a search for the topic and didn´t get any relevant answers):

... ONE thing which turned out to be a deal-breaker for me: the non-standard handling of unquantized MIDI input, which means MIDI recordings are delayed by the ASIO buffer size.

This basically scuppers any attempt to use Live as a regular DAW for MIDI performances, because the timing of the recording doesn't match the timing of the performance.

It's been discussed ad nauseam in the "MIDI Delay Recording" thread on the Live bugs forum, and Ableton aren't budging on the issue.

BUT if you quantize your MIDI input, or indeed use it just for audio, this matters not a jot.

:shrug:

I just found out about this issue. Makes me a bit worried, since I'm pretty close on buying Live and I'll make recordings of my MIDI performances with it all the time.

Will I actually notice this MIDI delay with a good soundcard (in my case, RME Fireface 400) with a really low latency setting?

Yes.. This is why i stopped using Live for midi recording.

Live doesn't record what you play but the delayed output of what you hear.
This is unacceptable for me being the drummer i am. It drove me nuts.
I now use a dual setup.
I trigger Live on my laptop from sonar on my tower.

But is the delayed MIDI output really noticable? When I hear the delayed output using the Live-demo, I don't notice any delay. How does this delay really affect my recordings? Somebody please explain!

If I'm missing something and it's really noticable, then that's a major drag and deal-breaker for me. I just can't believe that I've heard nothing about this while I've been considering Live, read a dozen reviews of it and been following several of its forums for months - and two days before I plan to buy it I get this information...

[timothyallan]

throw some vsts into the pile and see how the latency goes...

[Grappadura]

It hasnt been an issue for me yet, or at least I wasn´t aware of it. Probably its not as bad as you may think.

[Tone Deft]

like any other piece of software, try the demo. I haven't had the problems you're describing but I don't record from external sequencers into Live's sequencer, just audio.

[Geebag]

Me neither. Never knew about the issue or had any midi timing problems with live.

[abort]

Is it USB!!!! OR MIDI!!!

They are vary different!!!!

[timothyallan]

Is it USB!!!! OR MIDI!!!

They are vary different!!!!

That's some signature material there

[abort]

Very true!

[morerecords]

the only time it has ever been an issue is when using ERA. It doesn't affect your hardware synths, and in fact, when comapred to the bullshit way Logic handles it, your good

[adventurepants_]

I think the OP is talking about a specific midi timing issue when recording midi instruments in non quantised time. This is a quirk unique to Live it seems.

if youre recording a piano part to midi, the notes on the timeline will fall where the sound was heard, not when the input was made.

this is hell for any part where tiny timing variations are important, such as recording live unquantised midi percussion.

this is a separate issue from the also known sync problems with external gear, where the clock will drift under different system loads.

[klagga]

I think the OP is talking about a specific midi timing issue when recording midi instruments in non quantised time. This is a quirk unique to Live it seems.

if youre recording a piano part to midi, the notes on the timeline will fall where the sound was heard, not when the input was made.

this is hell for any part where tiny timing variations are important, such as recording live unquantised midi percussion.

This is what I´m talking about.

I guess no sequencer is perfect.

[chis]

Synchronise to seq24?

[adventurepants_]

Synchronise to seq24?

i really like seq24, i have problems with it crashing a lot though, im not sure it can deal with a lot of midi information when recording sequences.

[Khazul]

... ONE thing which turned out to be a deal-breaker for me: the non-standard handling of unquantized MIDI input, which means MIDI recordings are delayed by the ASIO buffer size.

This basically scuppers any attempt to use Live as a regular DAW for MIDI performances, because the timing of the recording doesn't match the timing of the performance.

It's been discussed ad nauseam in the "MIDI Delay Recording" thread on the Live bugs forum, and Ableton aren't budging on the issue.

BUT if you quantize your MIDI input, or indeed use it just for audio, this matters not a jot.

:shrug:

If you are using Live as a real time perfromance synth, then you are going to be running a very low latency audio interface along with small buffer sizes.

That buffer size and asociated delays will probably be way less than the effect of serialising note messages over a slow MIDI serial interface ffs!

To put it in context - at 44.1K sample rate, a buffer size of 128ms is about 3ms latency. If you hit a 3 note chord on a midi controllers then at the very best it will take 3ms by the time those 3 notes have all been stuffed out of the midi port on the controller - and forget it if you were cranking some controller CCs at the same time.

Most decent modern audio interfaces with decent quality drivers on a reasonable computer can easily handle smaller buffer sizes such that the quantizing effect is insignificant compared to the quantizing effect of midi itself.

What it annoyying and a little ironic about this - those of us with high channel count audio interfaces (24 in/out for eg) are probably also the poor sods who may have to run at higher latencies and guess what - were probably also the same poor sods with a bunch of midi devices and hardware synths etc. Live with it - on the priority list were way below the floorboards in all DAWs these days except possibly PT.

roll:

[ctx]

This issue is really a lot more complicated than you might think. First of all there is the issue of what is "correct" timing anyway. Anything going through a MIDI cable has pretty poor timing, even if that wasn't a problem most standard MIDI hardware and drivers is rather loosely timed as well.

For example, if you are playing midi in from an external device, there is no sample-accurate timestamp on any midi input. The end result is that (barring some very unusual host functionality) it's all quantized to your ASIO buffer size. I think only Steinberg and Emagic made some midi interfaces that could do better, which are long since discontinued and I think required special host support anyway... So you cannot even capture the already poor timing of MIDI cables properly and we haven't even gotten to the host itself yet.

Point being, Live is hardly an exception here. If you sit down and test them very few hosts actually deal with realtime MIDI well, it's just a matter of which particular problems you have to live with.

That's not to say that there is no room for improvement, though. There are certainly all kinds of problems with the way Live deals with and creates latency and itssupport for plugins that send MIDI is also rather poor in general.