Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

mayabong · Post by **mayabong** » Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:25 pm

I thought this was only an issue with audio tracks. If you record with monitoring on, or on AUTO then ableton will record the latency to the track.

Well I tested my midi the same way and it appears to also record the latency if you are monitoring.

I recorded 2 tracks at the same time, one with monitoring on and one with monitoring off.

Sure enough the midi track with monitoring ON is late.

Is this a bug? Has anyone else tested this. I"ve been recording like this for years and just thought I had really bad timing.

I'm using a Scarlett 18i interface
My latency is around 6ms
My computer is custom built and pretty beefy so I dont think thats an issue.
Ableton 10

Any ideas?

NF2K · Post by **NF2K** » Tue Feb 21, 2023 6:25 pm

Hi mayabong,

I only just bought an external interface (Scarlett Solo) to start recording into Live and discovered the audio version of this exact type of delay (only tested audio recording so far) i.e. I can record to two tracks simultaneously from the same Ext. In. source, but the one with monitoring On/Auto records late. This only seems to apply to Ext. In., i.e. recording from one audio track to another is fine.. ( I did notice actually that recording using Resampling it records late by 1 sample if Monitoring is on.. on further testing it records 1 sample later every time the Live loops and after it drifts several ms late it seems to correct itself and starts to drift again, but this might be a separate issue.. )

Here's an example of the delayed recorded audio in monitored tracks:

Did you find any solution to this?

update: I'll log some troubleshooting here. I'm running Live 11 on windows 10. I have a Scarlett Solo 3rd gen (this might not be related to the problem though)
- Tried different USB cable to the Scarlett - same behaviour
- Loaded "C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 11 Suite\Resources\Builtin\Templates\DefaultLiveSet.als" in case my customised default was the issue - same
- Removed my Default Audio Track.als in case my custom has issues then creating new audio tracks - same
- Switching from Focusrite via ASIO to onboard Realtek via MME/DirectX - same
... Trying many different input/output + driver + sample rate + buffer lengths - Hard to interpret the results - I'm getting all manner of delays in both unmonitored and monitored tracks, including sometimes the audio is appearing to have been recorded before the MIDI was even sent to the external synth >.<
- Closed Live - removed (renamed) %appdata%\Ableton\ - relaunched - same

I think this delay issue might have been present prior to getting and installing the Scarlett Solo, as I recall sometimes just using the laptop keyboard as MIDI keyboard there would be a noticeable delay (even not recording) which seemed longer than expected based on the output buffer length in live prefs

- Creating system restore point and disabling/uninstalling onboard audio devices. Three devices focussing on: "High Definition Audio Device" - "NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)" - "Realtek High Definition Audio"
- - Closed Live, Disabled these three and also MS-20 mini (only other Sound device listed, Scarlett is unplugged and so unlisted) - Disabling Realtek prompts for Windows to restart - restarting ...

fishmonkey · Post by **fishmonkey** » Tue Feb 21, 2023 10:22 pm

you can't completely eliminate latency when monitoring through Live:

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... monitoring

NF2K · Post by **NF2K** » Wed Feb 22, 2023 12:59 am

Does it matter that I have no devices on any of the tracks in my test? There was almost 1/16th of delay in that particular test

edit: idk, I've got it down to a workable delay playing with settings.. I'll see how it behaves

NF2K · Post by **NF2K** » Wed Feb 22, 2023 1:05 pm

Any combination of Reduced Latency When Monitoring and Delay Compensation on/off makes no difference when repeating my above test.
But the latency is low enough now that it's working for me at the moment

edit 26feb23: Ah OK, part of my problem was also that I had latency-causing devices on the master. I thought their latency would be bypassed as they were turned off, but actually it makes sense that their latency is still respected (in case they are activated while transport is running).

Not sure if this applies to @mayabong's initial post, apologies for hijacking the thread if not

Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

Re: Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

Re: Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

Re: Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on

Re: Latency being recorded on midi tracks where monitoring is on