Recording audio tracks from MIDI tracks
Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 7:45 pm
I've been struggling with understanding latency in Ableton Live 10 when recording MIDI tracks to audio tracks. I need to understand this for internal Live instruments, VST plug-ins, and external MIDI devices, such as drum machines and synthesizers.
If I record "Audio From" the "Master" track when playing back MIDI, there is always a 60-80ms latency introduced into the recording (see Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
As you can see in the two figures, although the MIDI note is on the 1.2, the recorded audio is late, and this audio cannot be used without being edited. The MIDI instrument used in this example could really be anything, but in this case it's the zero latency Operator preset 5th Stab Lead.
I spent a long time reading the Ableton documentation trying to understand what was causing this and how to correct for it. However, nothing suggested was at all effective. Finally, I tried changing the "Audio From" to the MIDI track directly, and suddenly the recording was nearly perfect, accurate to better than 1ms (see Figure 3).
Figure 3
Here is the external link for the Figures on Imgur incase they are not showing up: https://imgur.com/a/t5Fy7X6
I'm interested to know why recording "Audio From" the "Master" track is introducing this unwanted latency. As the example demonstrates, there is no actual inherent latency. The only difference between the unusable first recording and the accurate second recording was the drop down selection for "Audio From". If this latency in the audio from Master is by design, then I have to say, it's an unwelcome design. Hopefully, I'm just overlooking something and there is a way to record audio from master without artificial latency.
Thanks
If I record "Audio From" the "Master" track when playing back MIDI, there is always a 60-80ms latency introduced into the recording (see Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
As you can see in the two figures, although the MIDI note is on the 1.2, the recorded audio is late, and this audio cannot be used without being edited. The MIDI instrument used in this example could really be anything, but in this case it's the zero latency Operator preset 5th Stab Lead.
I spent a long time reading the Ableton documentation trying to understand what was causing this and how to correct for it. However, nothing suggested was at all effective. Finally, I tried changing the "Audio From" to the MIDI track directly, and suddenly the recording was nearly perfect, accurate to better than 1ms (see Figure 3).
Figure 3
Here is the external link for the Figures on Imgur incase they are not showing up: https://imgur.com/a/t5Fy7X6
I'm interested to know why recording "Audio From" the "Master" track is introducing this unwanted latency. As the example demonstrates, there is no actual inherent latency. The only difference between the unusable first recording and the accurate second recording was the drop down selection for "Audio From". If this latency in the audio from Master is by design, then I have to say, it's an unwelcome design. Hopefully, I'm just overlooking something and there is a way to record audio from master without artificial latency.
Thanks