Latency Issue with live Instrument's

[r_kennico]

I've mic'd my drummer and he's coming into Ableton. I wanted to apply reverb to his snare and send it back to him via monitoring 'on' in Ableton for recording and even the possibility of performing live.

I can cancel out the overall latency with a good sounding number of samples, but I can't get the output latency down enough to not bother the drummer, or even cancel out entirely; preferred.

So what do I do?

I know there's got to be a way because I'm sure plenty of touring act's are doing this themselves.

I have a Mac that's not even a year old yet and I put the fastest processor in it I could and installed a 150 gb ssd.

Any tip's to keep CPU and latency down so I can use Ableton's inboard effect's on live instrument's would be very much so appreciated right now.

[r_kennico]

Probably should of done some searching before posting this post, but I'm tired and well, if anyone replies, thanks for the attention, I appreciate you took the time to answer the post, or consider putting time into it.

Here's what I found after a simple Google search.
http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/ableton- ... leton-live

I'll give it a try with my drummer.

[r_kennico]

Yeah def gonna need some assistance with this one. That guy's article wasn't very helpful.

[Angstrom]

the guy with the article has misunderstood the purpose of the driver error compensation box. It doesn't do what he thinks it does. Correct use of this parameter is explained in the application's Driver error compensation lesson. Via the help menu.

Actually one way to decrease latency is to increase your sample rate. Latency is a sample based issue so if you have 1000 samples of latency, and you run your system at a faster rate of samples-per-second then can understand how that shaves some latency off.

Although this may have other unintended consequences, you may encounter up-sampling in real time (if any samples were recorded at the lower sample rate), also some half-baked VSTs might sound different if they were coded idiotically. Your mileage may vary.

Try it: I'd pick double your normal sample rate (so 88.2 if you normally work at 44.1)and see what your set sounds like. If it sounds acceptable to you then try it with your drummer.

[timday]

You can also try the "reduced latency when monitoring" option, and if you have access to the control panel for your interface (like an ASIO panel) you can try reducing the buffer size. If you go down too small it will start to break up but you should have some leeway.

If neither of these work, I've been getting this issue with recording and it seems to stop if I turn delay compensation off in the options. Go figure. This does however fit with previous experience - in Ableton 7 I never had latency issues and in order to turn on what they called "strict delay compensation" you had to mess around with the options.txt file so it never got turned on. So I guess it makes some sort of sense that turning the equivalent off in the options menu of Abes 8 might get rid of latency issues. Again it might mess with your more complicated soft synths and FX chains though.

[r_kennico]

Thanks! Good advice from both of you.

I'm going to try out the 'Reduced Latency when Monitoring' in the options menu.

I found that 'Delay compensation' was already turned on, I don't see that having a harmful effect.

Also may take a look at the 'track delay' section. It has pre-delay in ms and smp that could compensate any latency when monitoring is on.

First though, I'll definitely try to get my core audio buffer size right and 0 out the overall latency.

I learned in the lesson to start at the lowest sample rate and work your way up til it's not breaking up anymore. After that I do the math for the driver error compensation and 0 out the overall latency. I thought between 45 and 49 sample's sounded best, I don't why. Just using my ears.

We enjoy recording as a band in sync so if I can get the system to record us all equally and do it's part on drums with monitoring on, I'd be a happy camper.

I have a Presonus Studio live mixer so 44100 and 48000 sample rate's are all it will record in.

Tried using it's Capture program for the first time and playback was only coming in one side of the headphones, so I'll have to read the manual and figure that out, but I love Ableton and want this to work for me.

Thanks guy's.

[r_kennico]

I will try turning off delay compensation. Could get more "organic", if you want to call it that, result's. What I mean is, less process could be better.

[r_kennico]

Did some more research and perhaps my driver is filling up with too many file's. I've kinda been an idiot with this one and not been using my external hard drive from glyph. I'm moving a lot of stuff over there and going to continue cleaning up my computer to reduce latency and my cpu.

[Hermanus]

The big lesson I understood one day made me feel dumb.

The crucial point is to set the overal latency to 0.


Start from there and hear how latency works. It should be ok.

EDIT: I forgot to say that the initial buffer is very important.
on the screenshot you can see mine is at 256. above would ruin the magic in my case


The best way to test your latency is to plug an output of your soundcard into one of its inputs>>> record a single sound to audio into live.
try with one kick or snare or even the metronome
If your overal latency is set to zero, the recorded clips should be straight copies of your original sound without any latency.
turn monitor off to record if I remember well

Tonedeft has explained it well but I cant find the topic sorry


I have a project with a singer and from the day I set it like the image above, my singer and I are both happy.
Now I know that me the user has always have a bend for complicating things

[fishmonkey]

The big lesson I understood one day made me feel dumb.

The crucial point is to set the overal latency to 0.

nope, this is wrong, you have the same misunderstanding as the guy who wrote the article in the link posted above.

you cannot get an overall latency of 0ms, not unless you invent a time machine first.

in your case with your vocalist you are side-stepping the issue by using hardware monitoring, and turning the monitoring in Live off. that way you are avoiding the latency involved in the audio going through Live and then back out to your singer. in fact, if you don't need to use software effects then direct hardware monitoring is the best solution to the latency issue when recording live instruments or vocals.

[r_kennico]

That's what we've been doing fishmonkey, but my drummer feel's he'd play differently in response to the sync with the effect's, so we need monitoring on.

I think you get it.

[fishmonkey]

i hear ya.

to get the lowest latency you need to use the highest sample rate and lowest buffer size that your setup can handle. also, use the minimum amount of effects that you can, and use lower latency effects when possible.

are you running other tracks and instruments out of Live at the same time?

[r_kennico]

yes. but I don't need to monitor those. presently.

[fishmonkey]

so is it the latency between the processed sound and the acoustic sound of your drummer's kit that is throwing her/him?

[r_kennico]

I don't think so, no.

We just have to get the raw signal back to him through Ableton's mixer with no latency first. Slapping the effect's on shouldn't cause an upset, at least I don't think so. The only thing I see going up is CPU usage once the effect is turned on.

I work with him on the weekend's, so I'll know if all this advice work's then. Thanks, keep you posted.