Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

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GuitarProducer
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:17 pm

Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by GuitarProducer » Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:20 pm

I have been recording myself playing guitar for about a year now, and long ago figured out the tricks for buffer size and delay compensation/reduced latency when monitoring so when I pluck a string I hear it immediately.

However, all of a sudden in the past week or two I have suddenly incurred an additional ~50ms of delay when I record. This is incredibly significant to the point I can't play in rhythm properly with this much delay. The entire experience of recording has been ruined.

Again, this is coming after nearly a year of everything working fine, so the question is really - has anyone else found this to be a sudden and new issue, and if so have you figured it out?

miyaru
Posts: 1267
Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:08 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by miyaru » Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:57 pm

Do you use a new guitar plugin? If yes, that might be the culprit......

Also check if your driver is updated in any way.

Also provide some more system info, as this info is maybe needed to help you........
See also: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=242485&sid=6e55edb7 ... 3630950891
Greetings from Miyaru.
Prodaw i7-7700, 16Gb Ram, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen, ESI M4U eX, Reason 12, Live Suit 10, Push2, Presonus Eris E8 and Monitor Station V2, Lexicon MPX1,
Korg N1, Yamaha RM1x :mrgreen:

GuitarProducer
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:17 pm

Re: Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by GuitarProducer » Sat Jan 07, 2023 7:02 am

I haven't changed anything about my guitar setup and I'm on an M1 Macbook Pro so I've been using the newest Ableton for almost the whole time. Absolutely nothing has changed except now I have a massive lag in my signal.

yur2die4
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Re: Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by yur2die4 » Sat Jan 07, 2023 2:30 pm

You might have to comb through your setup to find the culprit.

First thing I’d check is audio settings in Preferences.

Then I’d look at the channel in your set that receives the guitar audio input (or channels if there are multiple). You might be able to hover over each plug-in on the channel to see if it adds latency (unless I’m remembering incorrectly). Or the more annoying method, process of elimination (which can go more quickly if you start that process in sections).

After checking the input channel strip, I’d check every channel that receives audio from that channel. Either channels assigned to receive audio or Return channels.

Lastly, the audio output channel. Assuming your input channel is being sent to the master, you’d want to check that.

Back to the process of elimination.
If you use a lot of plugins, that could get challenging. So you might want to start in broad sweeps. The first thing I’d try is,
A fresh empty set, direct audio in, through channel, sent to Master. Zero devices or plugins. See if you still have latency. If yes, then it’s a Live/interface/OS problem, and you won’t have to comb through plugins.

If it is not problematic with zero plugins/devices, then open your normal set and remove all plugins from a particular channel in the chain. So maybe start with Master, see if it improves with no devices in the master. If that doesn’t fix it, either re-open and try a different part of the chain, or keep removing parts of the chain without re-opening the set.

If you’re lucky, removing devices of one of those sections should fix the latency issue.

That’s when you dive into Just that section and remove devices one by one. Hopefully that reveals the culprit.

jlgrimes
Posts: 1770
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:55 am
Location: Atlanta, Ga

Re: Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by jlgrimes » Mon Jan 09, 2023 4:27 pm

:roll:
GuitarProducer wrote:
Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:20 pm
I have been recording myself playing guitar for about a year now, and long ago figured out the tricks for buffer size and delay compensation/reduced latency when monitoring so when I pluck a string I hear it immediately.

However, all of a sudden in the past week or two I have suddenly incurred an additional ~50ms of delay when I record. This is incredibly significant to the point I can't play in rhythm properly with this much delay. The entire experience of recording has been ruined.

Again, this is coming after nearly a year of everything working fine, so the question is really - has anyone else found this to be a sudden and new issue, and if so have you figured it out?

I recently ran into this issue after needing to add a part for a client after a mix, but realized the issue was Ozone on the master channel. Even though Ozone was turned off Ableton still adds set latency to path. I was able to fix by doing a cut on the Ozone device and pasting it to an empty track.

That removed the latency from my recording path but also kept my previous master bus settings in place when I was ready to enable after recording.

GuitarProducer
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:17 pm

Re: Is anyone else suddenly experiencing lag when recording live instruments

Post by GuitarProducer » Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:32 pm

jlgrimes wrote:
Mon Jan 09, 2023 4:27 pm
:roll:
GuitarProducer wrote:
Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:20 pm
I have been recording myself playing guitar for about a year now, and long ago figured out the tricks for buffer size and delay compensation/reduced latency when monitoring so when I pluck a string I hear it immediately.

However, all of a sudden in the past week or two I have suddenly incurred an additional ~50ms of delay when I record. This is incredibly significant to the point I can't play in rhythm properly with this much delay. The entire experience of recording has been ruined.

Again, this is coming after nearly a year of everything working fine, so the question is really - has anyone else found this to be a sudden and new issue, and if so have you figured it out?

I recently ran into this issue after needing to add a part for a client after a mix, but realized the issue was Ozone on the master channel. Even though Ozone was turned off Ableton still adds set latency to path. I was able to fix by doing a cut on the Ozone device and pasting it to an empty track.

That removed the latency from my recording path but also kept my previous master bus settings in place when I was ready to enable after recording.

This was exactly the issue - thank you so much for figuring it out.

What is insane to me personally is ***I HAD THE LIMITER ON THE MASTER OFF*** so it never occurred to me it would still be impacting the mix I was hearing. As soon as I deleted the limiter off the master the issue went away. Thank you so much for taking the time.

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