Ableton Forum

hello party peoples,

i recently picked up a novation x-station 49 (i love it -- great piece of kit), and i'm having some trouble recording the synth's audio into Live 4. there seems to be loads of latency; does anyone have experience with this, and if so, how do i go about compensating for it?

evan

PS - the x-station synth itself sounds amazing, btw.

I'm in the market for a new midi keyboard / synth ... but i had my heart set on a firewire interaface soon too. Is the x-station too much like a vcr/tv/bottle opener/flyswatter? I know the novation synths are great, and you need a midi keyboard when working with music software, and an audio interface, but is the all-in-one option the way to go?

Did you download the new drivers? They are at the Novation music site. I am thinking about picking one up. Let us know your results.

well, i'm not sure if it's a problem with the x-station's audio interface, or if it's just Live (i was formerly using an Event EZBus -- and i was having the same problem in Live 3/4).

i mean, i'm sorta new to the world of "latency" -- i've always just recorded midi. should there be a significant delay/difference in the way i'm hearing the synth play over my drum loop in realtime, vs. how it sounds when the recording plays back? is there an easy way to compensate for this -- like dragging the audio clip back x number of milliseconds in the Live sequencer?

sorry if this is a really obvious question. =/

evan

I would sync it up to Live via midi, and sequence a short note pattern (where the sound attacks at 100%). Record that as an audio clip with track monitoring on. Zoom into the newly recorded audio clip and slide the track beginning to the tip of the audio waveform. Zoom in even closer and see what the number is. That's the amount of milliseconds that the delay is from the synth.

Type that number into the latency compensation box in the audio preferences. I usually just add the two latency numbers together and type that in the box, that seems to work for me. Note: the latency compensation only works if you disable the monitoring on the track to which you are recording. Monitor it solely with your audio interface, or with the synth through your external mixer.

Using the X-Station here with no problems at all.

New drivers have just been released along with an Editor that lets you set up midi controls etc on the pc screen. It's not the most intuitive, but pretty good.

lowbot wrote:I would sync it up to Live via midi, and sequence a short note pattern (where the sound attacks at 100%). Record that as an audio clip with track monitoring on. Zoom into the newly recorded audio clip and slide the track beginning to the tip of the audio waveform. Zoom in even closer and see what the number is. That's the amount of milliseconds that the delay is from the synth.

Type that number into the latency compensation box in the audio preferences. I usually just add the two latency numbers together and type that in the box, that seems to work for me. Note: the latency compensation only works if you disable the monitoring on the track to which you are recording. Monitor it solely with your audio interface, or with the synth through your external mixer.

I have the latest drivers (still in beta state for mac) from Novation. Tried this and found a value of 40 ms. Added this (in neg of course) in the latency compensation field, tried again. Surprise : the latency was still exactly the same !!

okay, now try it with monitoring OFF.

Are you using the x-station as midi clock slave/ master?
It might be that you need to adjust the latency for that too.
I noticed that i can change the start of my midisequences on my Roland SH-32 this way but can't get a lower latency than about 4 ms.

Just received my x-station today. I'm not sure which drivers to install:


a) Should I even bother doing an install of the CD

b) If not, and I should download from their site, where does one begin? I mean, there's 8-9 updates posted?

Any help would be appreciated.

Here's the page where the updates are located:
http://www.novationmusic.com/downloads. ... d=1&type=1

shtreimel wrote:Just received my x-station today. I'm not sure which drivers to install:


a) Should I even bother doing an install of the CD

b) If not, and I should download from their site, where does one begin? I mean, there's 8-9 updates posted?

Any help would be appreciated.

Here's the page where the updates are located:
http://www.novationmusic.com/downloads. ... d=1&type=1

Help?

Sorry to go on a tangent here, i hope everyones issues get sorted out.

but i have a question for X-Station owners.
Does the Hardware Synth show up in Live as a plugin?

"The stereo audio output is sent straight through the USB cable onto the track in your sequencer via ASIO" This leads me to believe it acts as a DSP based plugin (similar to the fortchoming Virus TI). Can anyone confirm or elaborate?

I've owned the X-Station for awhile now and my experience with latency in Live has been very good. I haven't had any issues when recording the built-in KS synth directly into Live. I usually run at 6ms/17ms latency because I need to bring the buffer down in order for my Powercore plugs to work without high CPU usage.

shtreimel: The only file you actually NEED from the Novation downloads page is the one with the audio and MIDI drivers. If you're a PC user, it's the third file on the list and if you're a Mac user it's the fourth or fifth file. And yes, I would recommend just downloading the files and ignoring your CD drivers since they're probably not up to date. The other files provide various support and utilitiy functions. I would recommend downloading the editor as it allows you to visually change your templates rather than using the display screen on the X-Station. Also, you'll want to update the X-Station OS if it's below version 2.3.

AdamJay: The X-Station synth doesn't show up as a plug-in. Basically, you toggle the X-Station between controller mode and synth mode. When you're in synth mode, anything you play is sent out over the USB cable as an audio signal just as if you were recording an external hardware synth. So you do all of your patch selection and editing on the X-Station itself and anything you play will be recorded as audio onto an armed audio track in Live. Does that make sense?

Dogen

Dogen, thank you that does make sense.
In hardware synth mode, can you send midi to the X-Station hardware synth through its own USB cable? That would kind of give it an external DSP charm, eh?

Hmm, that's a good question. I'm not sure if would work but as long as the X-Station can recieve a MIDI in signal you would think it would. Very interesting idea, I'll give it a try tonight and see what happens.

I've actually really enjoyed using the synth mode as a quick way of laying down a synth part in Live without having to configure a VSTi and MIDI track. It really lends itself to the Live way of working: no tedious setup, just press a button and play!

Dogen