Can someone confirm incorrect VSTI midi timing

toni · Post by **toni** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:34 am

Hello,
new to the forum.
have been having problems with vst intruments timing in ableton. When using vst's like battery2 for example I get a delay of around 4-5 milliseconds to the sounds. When I record say a four to the floor kick pattern to an audio channel or if I render it to audio the patterrn is delayed by a few milliseconds. This happens with all my other vsti's as well at varying degrees of delay. This is obviously without any vst effects inserted in the chain (not even abletons). I made sure that the samples were cut perfectly. I can definitely hear this happening as the vst's are playing and since for techno sounds have to be exactly in time this is very frustrating. Furthermore if I route battery2 through different channels the sounds coming out of the other channels are even more delayed. Resampling audio tracks to other audio tracks is just fine.. there is no delay at all. Also using Impulse I detect no delay to the sound.

Could someone confirm this by recording their vsts to audio and see what results they get. I am wondering if it's something wrong in my setup or if there is something I need to be adjusting in ableton. Reading the manual I have found nothing on the subject. Overall latency compensation is just for recording external audio if I'm not mistaken. So if someone can shed light on this issue and if it is a problem with vsti's also needing plugin delay compensation this would at least clarify the situation for me.

thanks

Toni

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:38 am

what sound card you have?

also, what's your latency set to?

toni · Post by **toni** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:45 am

Sorry forgot to say,

I have a Dell 5100 p4 2.8g 768mb RAM with a Echo Indigo io set at usually 512. I think I tried to experiment with other buffer setings and got the same results. How would that make a difference if I am bouncing to audio within ableton?

overall latency compensation is set to 24 ms. also testing different settings I got the same results. and also trying to record the vst to an audio channel with monitoring turned off made no difference.

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:23 am

if you have any vst fx other than the vsti you will incur latency. Especially if you have anything on the master bus.

in order to get a spot on render using fx, you have to either use abletons plugins or compensate manually.

-tim

toni · Post by **toni** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:28 am

Yes I know. This was with no effects at all. Just the vsti. Also this happens with battery2 and not with impulse.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:31 am

have you chosen the asio driver in live?

also did you set the latency as low as possible?

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:36 am

oh yeah, missed that part in your first post

ok, umm, are you using any of the built in compressors,fx etc in battery2, or is it just a dry sample?

toni · Post by **toni** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:48 am

just a dry sample. but this is not just with battery2 but also with fm7 and other vsti's. if you have the chance to check this out with their vst instruments that would be useful. and if there is something that can be done to fix this in abletons or my soundcards setup that would be great.

it is also easy to confirm this by adjusting the newly recorded loop in ableton with the warp markers and you will notice the original vsti sound phasing with the recorded audio loop.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:29 pm

toni wrote:and if there is something that can be done to fix this in abletons or my soundcards setup that would be great.

Hate to be rude, but I mentioned this twice already.. did you set the latency as low as possible in your soundcard settings? 512 will give you noticable delay, it should be 64 or 128...

toni · Post by **toni** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:00 pm

sweetjesus wrote:
toni wrote:and if there is something that can be done to fix this in abletons or my soundcards setup that would be great.
Hate to be rude, but I mentioned this twice already.. did you set the latency as low as possible in your soundcard settings? 512 will give you noticable delay, it should be 64 or 128...

tried that and that's not the issue. it's not concerning audio latency.

the midi timing is not correct in ableton as far as i can tell.

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:25 pm

I have noticed this as well. Arpeggiators are also a problem running in certain VSTi's. I wondered about the latency....

I just warp the loops so that they are tight, but it can be tough with some...

Being relatively new to this, I just chalked it up to regular issues with using computers to make music, but if there is a way to fix this, or it is a slight bug, it would definitely get my vote for a fix.

Cheers,
AB

roby · Post by **roby** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 6:48 pm

you could be using the 'DX' Indigo drivers not the 'ASIO' drivers, so setting the latency for your Indigo may not take effect until you switch to ASIO.
that's just my guess. i'm working with Live as I type this and i have no problems..

toni · Post by **toni** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:23 am

i've tried every possible combination in abletons settings and i get the same results. just resample a vsti into an audio channel in ableton and see if the sounds are where you programmed them in the midi editor. for example program a note on the first beat playing any vsti without effects.then resample that and check to see if the sound is exactly falling on the beat or if it is delayed a few milliseconds.. i've been noticing several ms offset when playing vsti's not from a controller but midi programmed in ableton. there should be no offset.

anti banausic- that's what i'm talking about. hopefully there will be plans for pdc or something to fix this. been using fruity loops lately again and just export audio to use in ableton.

ct43 · Post by **ct43** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:22 pm

this a PDC problem as far as I know... its a pain in the ass!

Nikocat · Post by **Nikocat** » Mon May 02, 2005 11:46 pm

yeah toni, Im doing the exact same thing with FLstudio. If people would actually try the test they would see there is a major problem with LIVEs Vsti / vst implementation.

This is extremely frustrating with no easy work around.

Im amazed this hasnt caused an uproar.