Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Share what you’d like to see added to Ableton Live.
krisna
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:55 pm

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by krisna » Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:36 am

Also why is the Audio recording latency not compensated when the monitoring is on? this is makes Ableton so useless when you want to record something through an amp sim. Because you always need 2 tracks to record a guitar or a bass and after recording you have to switch the files! wtf! why don´t they fix this? this is super annoying

jbone1313
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:44 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by jbone1313 » Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:55 pm

krisna wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:36 am
Also why is the Audio recording latency not compensated when the monitoring is on? this is makes Ableton so useless when you want to record something through an amp sim. Because you always need 2 tracks to record a guitar or a bass and after recording you have to switch the files! wtf! why don´t they fix this? this is super annoying
They fixed that like ten years ago. Turn on Reduced Latency While Monitoring.

krisna
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:55 pm

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by krisna » Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:35 pm

this is not what I mean. Low latency mode is just compensating the latency of the plugins and not of the Overalll system. As well does this low latency mode cause severe other problems as described in the manual: "When this option is active, automation recorded on armed tracks is placed at the wrong time relative to recorded audio and MIDI if latency-inducing plug-ins are currently in use. As a result, what is played back sounds different from what is recorded."

so you can´t record audio with just one track. You always have to record two tracks and then switch the audio. this is a no go for a recording software as EVERY other daw does this. Let´s say I want to record a bass and a guitar with my friend through some amp sim. Then I would need 4 tracks and if we quickliy want to listen back what we´ve played we have to switch all the files back and forth which is super annoying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT5mD2Zd7F8

jbone1313
Posts: 578
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:44 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by jbone1313 » Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:03 pm

I know exactly how it works, and no, I do not think you have to do all that. All it means is when RLWM is on, then Ableton records what you play, not what you hear. And vice versa.

Yes, it is correct that automation could be off. So, you can record your automation without RLWM.

Ableton is the only DAW I know that offers the option to choose whether it records what is heard vs what is played. I quite like it.

Also, the default behavior is probably what most users want. When you are playing through a latent system, you are usually compensating your playing automatically. So, most users would expect Ableton to record what they hear, not what they play. But again, the choice is yours.

krisna
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Mar 13, 2021 4:55 pm

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by krisna » Fri Mar 26, 2021 12:59 am

Low latency mode doesn´t do nothing ther is still a huge difference between auto monitoring on and off. I´ve tested it now many times. And no I react on what i hear instantly so the signal which fist has to be converted into digital and all takes time and this is not what I am playing. this is bullshit. sorry but this makes the DAW quite unusable together with all the other inabilities in terms of recording audio and mixing. I really regret buying this

maky355
Posts: 238
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:10 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by maky355 » Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:34 pm

It's 2021 and people still don't understand what exactly is PDC and how it works :lol: There's like 5 different scenarios mentioned in this thread and somehow people thing it's all the same thing.

And then they expect a DAW which sees in the future, ahead of time :)

baseinstinct
Posts: 924
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:45 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by baseinstinct » Sat Apr 03, 2021 6:56 pm

Go ahead, enlighten us :)
Maybe this requires up to 5 separate threads.

randi
Posts: 105
Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:03 am
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Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by randi » Sat May 22, 2021 2:23 pm

I can live with all the above mentioned, but not that midi clock is not PDC compensated. This is a major hassle for me

maky355
Posts: 238
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:10 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by maky355 » Sat May 22, 2021 3:48 pm

baseinstinct wrote:
Sat Apr 03, 2021 6:56 pm
Go ahead, enlighten us :)
Maybe this requires up to 5 separate threads.
No you can do that yourself. Just google it. If you want long story short. No DAW can see in the future.

A bit longer:

Even today in 2021 I meet people which think that if you throw say 15 plugins which induces latency of 320ms, they think that their DAW when doing PDC nullifies it. It doesn't. Latency is ALWAYS there.

All it does is that when you press play, song will start 320ms later because all channels with no latency are aligned to the one with the largest latency (in above example it's 320ms). But these wizards don't sense even 320ms of latency upon pressing play so therefore they think PDC sees in the future and they can throw whatever they want and PDC will nullify it. Ha ha.

I expect you would think this issue viewtopic.php?f=1&t=243120 is same being reported here. Let me save your time. It's not. It doesn't have anything with the PDC itself. It's about midi sync clock signal which was for some weird reason decided as not important factor for Ableton geniuses.

maky355
Posts: 238
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:10 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by maky355 » Sat May 22, 2021 3:48 pm

randi wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 2:23 pm
I can live with all the above mentioned, but not that midi clock is not PDC compensated. This is a major hassle for me
Exactly. Join here.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=243120

baseinstinct
Posts: 924
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:45 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by baseinstinct » Sat May 22, 2021 8:45 pm

Plenty of assumptions in your message and refutations that go even further astray.

Admittedly, the matter should be broken down accordingly.

So here is just one aspect, OP sorry if that hijacks the topic for a while.

Bottonline, look for a moment at a single thing that does not work although it could.

Put heavy effects on a track and a looper at the end. Put many to ensure this is not down to your hearing capacity.

Record 4 bars, hear how the audio IS compensated as it should regardless of the total weight of the effects, and looper making no difference to that, which is good.

Now, drag the loop to an empty audio track. At this stage, you can both see in the clip waveform and hear against the original track that the recorded audio is recorded delayed, you'd almost want to say retarded.

To keep a loop library, you would always need to make sure start point needs no fixing, a fact which is downright lame. Still, that obsolete labour would be of no use whenever the sample playback were done by anything other than live, or its sampler or simpler.
Worse, messing around with with playback start for shifts by 1/16, 1/8 etc would keep you busy making sure this bigger or smaller gap is accounted for.
Now, think of those indeterminate less marked beats, loops not starting with a transient, pad loops or stuff like that. Sure, you can engineer around that like our grandfathers did, but keeping you busy fixing stuff is antithetical to computer programs. You want to take creative decisions and have the machine execute them seamlessly.


The cause? Trivial. Live does not do the correction to recorded loops, whereas the process is, actually, offline - you hear the original sound not recorded wav.
Note that in a vast majority of cases, the user presses the record or clip start button many milisecs ahead of the record start, so the correction could be done by Live if only in the majority of cases recording aligns to the tempo. So you play you music, hit record a fraction of a bar ahead of time, and live misses the metronome click and spits out a half-baked product.

So, there is abundance of cpu time for the correction, there is math (effects are measured for the delay they produce) , the track playback is right, but recording is done with error from the lack of delay compensation, which could be done by moving a few ms worth of audio from the beginning to the end. Alternatively, if too busy, live could have an option to have start point fixed.

If, as others say, other DAWs have had it sorted, why even wait for the next big version number? This is a loop based daw fk sake there is little more essential that playing to the beat without nudging.

sigonamusic
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2016 8:34 pm

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by sigonamusic » Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:19 pm

I agree, Ive never posted here but I had to on this one. In 2021 how in the hell is this still an issue? Other daws dont do this, how can Ableton have this latency compensation issue for plugins, and has NO INTENTION of fixing it! Very frustrating, and extremely disappointed on this god forsaken ableton flaw.

professorcobra wrote:
Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:29 pm
Hello dear and fellow Ableton producers and musicians,

unfortunately i really have to put emphasis on (in my view) the biggest and most embarassing flaw and actually straight up "no-go" in the ableton software today...

The non existance of the to-host-sync latency compensation.

Meaning, whenever i have a plugin or effect in my chain that introduces latency the audio is compensated but the clock timing of that track is NOT,
meaning for example plugins used for sidechain or re-envolping such as VolumeShaper, LFOTool you name it... are always out of sync - if a previous plugin introduced latency - aswell as Delays, Reverbs, Glitch Plugins: everyhing else that tried to sync to the DAW is also affected by this latency.

This is just not acceptable. Sure, a lot of you will argue that you can put effects such as sync automated sidechain in front of the latency inducing plugins, but sometimes this is not possible. Especially for plugins such as delays, glitch effects and stuff which are mostly used towards the end of a chain - this is a disaster.

So Delays, Pre-Delays from Reverbs, Note based Gates, all this stuff is out of sync if you not ONLY work with zero-latency plugins in that chain.

It comes even worse, when it comes to finding a work around for sidechaining, one can think: "Yeah but since Ableton 10 we have this max4live device called Shaper"

Well guess what: It is beyond me how this could pass through quality control but shaper is always not in timing. It is always delayed.
Try testing it out: Draw for example a square wave shape, where the first half of the legth (lets say a quarter note) is the value totally zero, and for the second half the value is 100% percent and then let it modulate the gain of a utility or the volume fader of the track etc. then resample/bounce/freeze-flatten it.
It is always off! In this example the shaper always lets something through after the beginning, which should be duked.
I know this is a different topic, but i will write a post about that aswell.

Coming back to the topic, so there is NOT even a workaround in regards to sidechaining.
Sorry but how poor is that. That is so over the top unprofesional.

And as a cherry on top, i know for this problem is even a bug report thread in an insider forum FOR YEARS.
And nothing is happening.

So for one last time, Ableton fix this.

Note:
I know this is an issue that an OVERWHELMING amount of ableton users doesn't even know about.
It is horryfing finding out that all those years in so many projects, stuff has been out of sync and you felt something was not right, but you could just not point your finger on it.
Utter disappointment in ableton!

MallorcaMalle
Posts: 101
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2020 10:35 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by MallorcaMalle » Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:38 pm

Even today in 2021 I meet people which think that if you throw say 15 plugins which induces latency of 320ms, they think that their DAW when doing PDC nullifies it. It doesn't. Latency is ALWAYS there.
All it does is that when you press play, song will start 320ms later because all channels with no latency are aligned to the one with the largest latency.
Thank you... the simplest explanation why Ableton as a DAW streamlined mainly for electronic music production and immediate reaction in live performances does not do this...

Funklestiltskin
Posts: 24
Joined: Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:07 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by Funklestiltskin » Wed Sep 15, 2021 6:50 am

I don't see why they wouldn't work on at least a settings option to enable this if the main issue is that it functions differently in live situations. This is really frustrating and renders lots of these sorts of plugins timing-based plugins (shaperbox, lfo tool, oszilloscope, etc.) obsolete. Every time I run into this problem it's infuriating - especially after dropping cash on all of these, only to find out they're practically useless - even in Live 11.

If I were Ableton, I'd make sure this is the TOP priority or they're gonna start losing customers.
I'm definitely taking a closer look at Bitwig, that's for sure...

maky355
Posts: 238
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:10 am

Re: Sync Latency Compensation DISASTER

Post by maky355 » Sun Nov 07, 2021 1:10 pm

Funklestiltskin wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 6:50 am
I don't see why they wouldn't work on at least a settings option to enable this if the main issue is that it functions differently in live situations. This is really frustrating and renders lots of these sorts of plugins timing-based plugins (shaperbox, lfo tool, oszilloscope, etc.) obsolete. Every time I run into this problem it's infuriating - especially after dropping cash on all of these, only to find out they're practically useless - even in Live 11.

If I were Ableton, I'd make sure this is the TOP priority or they're gonna start losing customers.
I'm definitely taking a closer look at Bitwig, that's for sure...
Hey matte, I have general message I just quoted you in order for you to get notification so that you see how I solved my issues.


**
To all buffoons who tried to tell me I am wrong and that Live works fine with outboard gear with sequencers: You don't know what you are talking about.

I tried to understand why you are trying to put me down so hard on this and as I understand one reason is my harsh language - which I can agree is harsh but I was frustrated. I still stand by my opinion - it is ridiculous from Ableton to not compensate for the MIDI clock by the same amount of latency that even their plugins causes - if not because of me and my bombastic claims then it's ridiculous because every other major DAW does it in the year 2021. Yes I tested all of them.

Another reason to put me down which is evident in this thread is simply because most of you never owned hardware yet you argue here and claim this or that or that I need to create ridiculous setup in order for this to work. It's simple: people who never used hardware with their Live don't even know what they are talking about.

To everyone else in the same problem as me - this solved all my problems. A person which didn't wanted to receive shitstorm from more fanboys privately contacted me and pointed out this product for me:

https://www.thomann.de/intl/e_rm_multiclock_usb.htm

ERM Midi Multiclock

I paid 600 EUR (539 + shipping) to some unknown company and after initial setup everything is super tight. I would love to support Ableton developers and for me it wouldn't be a problem to transfer 600 EUR directly into Ableton bank account only to make someone "tackle" the issue that Ableton is ignoring but seeing this wasn't even remotely on their map I purchased hardware device and now I have perfect sync Live+Hardware sequencers.

Apparently there is a cheaper product called USAMO but it isn't as good as this one when it comes to features.

ERM produces super tight clock simply because it send clock to its hardware from a plugin which is loaded in Live session. So it's sample accurate MIDI clock. And because it's a plugin loaded into Live mixer - whole signal takes in account complete latency of a session (if any) and align clock to that. Really simple when you think about it. I am finding it hard to believe that wizards at Ableton couldn't create software version years ago.

Everyone with hardware and in love with Live - Good luck with everything hopefully ERM will solve your issues the same way it solved mine. Be prepared to invest 600 EUR of course.

Perhaps after Live 11.1 is out - someone at Ableton decide to deal with this. Who knows perhaps Santa is real after all.

Cheers

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