TROUBLESHOOT: latency from Ableton but not Reaper

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Post Reply
shakey_hands
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2020 3:49 am

TROUBLESHOOT: latency from Ableton but not Reaper

Post by shakey_hands » Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:14 am

Hi

Ableton is causing me latency both in Midi and audio, and it should not be. My PC has a AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. 128 BG of ram. My boot drive is an SSD. And my sound card is an external USB connected Focusrite Clarett 4Pre. More to the point. I mainly use reaper and it has no issues at all, latency or not, even when I have 100+ tracks with a shit load of 3rd party plugins running.

To me this amounts to an issue with Ableton settings. However, the settings for buffer size etc are locked. All I can change is the 'driver error compensation' and that is not having any effect even when the 'overall latency' ms reading is at 0 ms.

Why are some of the controls such as buffer size locked and how do I fix this latency? At this point this issue is out of my technical depth. Thanks 🙂

I searched the forums and didnt find any threads that helped. I also cant see a dedicated 'troubleshooting' board to put this in, so i hope its in the correct place. Thank :)

jlgrimes
Posts: 1773
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:55 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga

Re: TROUBLESHOOT: latency from Ableton but not Reaper

Post by jlgrimes » Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:44 pm

shakey_hands wrote:
Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:14 am
Hi

Ableton is causing me latency both in Midi and audio, and it should not be. My PC has a AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. 128 BG of ram. My boot drive is an SSD. And my sound card is an external USB connected Focusrite Clarett 4Pre. More to the point. I mainly use reaper and it has no issues at all, latency or not, even when I have 100+ tracks with a shit load of 3rd party plugins running.

To me this amounts to an issue with Ableton settings. However, the settings for buffer size etc are locked. All I can change is the 'driver error compensation' and that is not having any effect even when the 'overall latency' ms reading is at 0 ms.

Why are some of the controls such as buffer size locked and how do I fix this latency? At this point this issue is out of my technical depth. Thanks 🙂

I searched the forums and didnt find any threads that helped. I also cant see a dedicated 'troubleshooting' board to put this in, so i hope its in the correct place. Thank :)


Are you having an issue with playing softsynths, or audio live

Or

Or you having an issue specifically with recorded delay compensation.


If issue is the latter, I believe it doesn't work when input monitoring is Auto, or On, and only works when off.

That said, if there is a clear difference when playing audio and hearing an offset when played back with input monitoring on or auto, that is some type of bug that should be reported to both Ableton and Focusrite.


Also if you are using input monitoring, your buffer size needs to be as low as possible and you need to be 110 percent conscious of the latency each plugin in your project produces. I.E. use zero latency plugins when tracking at low buffer sizes and latency effects will be minimized. If you can keep your roundtrip latency under 10ms, you are doing great. 10-20 ms, you might perceive some issues but probably can work around them. Over 20ms, will probably be unworkable unless you are playing in fairly simple stuff where precise timing isn't that important like a Pad or something.

Shift Gorden
Posts: 852
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:45 pm
Location: Oklahoma City
Contact:

Re: TROUBLESHOOT: latency from Ableton but not Reaper

Post by Shift Gorden » Wed Jan 12, 2022 7:18 pm

Hey mate, this is really weird. The fact your buffer size is locked ain't normal - so I suspect this has a lot/everything to do with it. You got a killer interface, and normal Live behavior shouldn't result in what you're seeing.

I don't have a PC, but I did find this short explanation. https://support.sundaysounds.com/hc/en- ... s-computer

Says you need to change something in the Focusrite software?

Post Reply