Synth latency

[Stromkraft]

Removing video effect plug-ins solves the problem. But I need those effects. VDMX is barely doing anything - just running some basic effects on three still images.

OK. I think what you should investigate is running these video effects separately if possible. You can make use of internal audio routing apps like Loopback, Soundflower or just any loopback features of your audio interface to get the audio signal, the master or a submix, to the video software.

This mingling of functions is obviously hurting your performance. I realize this will take some effort on your part, but I think it's a reasonable way forward that can control performance and hopefuly maintain the functionality you need.

To be able to run in another machine you need to look at something like the Dante Via and Dante Virtual Soundcard Combo.

This might entail using Max separately, which might mean you need a separate license to make this happen. But this is not certain and depends on the device. Running as a demo on the other machine might be sufficient. I've yet to try this myself. I'll report when I have (not soon).

The alternative would be to investigate on an object level what improvements you could possibly make inside the Max video devices. Maybe there can be some simplifications made that removes these issues of yours?

Another alternative is to get a much more powerful computer with more cores, i e throwing hardware at the problem.

[fishmonkey]

Not when using a minus value

if you put a minus track delay value on a track, this tells Live that you want that track to happen earlier relative to other tracks. to achieve that, all other tracks need to be delayed by a little....

[jonahmo]

Update... I also tried removing the LiveGrabber plug-ins at the same time as every other non-standard thing besides VDMX with a few effects on a still image. Basically running nothing else besides VDMX but a very basic, stock Ableton set.