ableton live looper latency issue..

[elwood88]

Im trying to use ableton looper as a live performance tool, but i got some serous latency issues with it..

my setup:

Analog mixer where i connect my vocal mic.. i send the audio through an aux send to my interface focusrite pro 10 i/o. from there it feeds the live looper.

my sample rate is at 125 and i did the latency compensation check ableton tutorial.

the problem i got is that ableton records with latency when i put monitoring on iside the software.. the offset is about 16 ms when monitoring is on..

when i record a clip with monitoring off i get perfect fitting loops..

i changed the looper to never monitor the input signal, but latency stays the same (i guess cause track monitoring is on).

is there a workaround so that you dont need to monitor your input signal inside live to feed looper with audio?? (clip recording also works without it)

hope somebody can help

[simmerdown]

using asio4all? works perfect for me with that....

[elwood88]

no im on a mac with core audio engine... whats the differencs with asio 4 all??

[simmerdown]

oh mac, sorry asio is pc only.....

[ivanohe]

Asio4all is not a cure for the issue you describe, this is just a way to get better performance (lower latency) with sound hardware that have weak Asio driver on windows.

The problem is that the looper can't compensate for the soundcard latency when monitoring is set to IN/Auto, and as you see, there is no audio to the looper when monitoring is set to OFF... So, you could try to lower your soundcard latency a bit more if possible. The issue will still be there but less noticable. Also, if you monitor thru the air (vocal, hand percussion, etc) and do overdub with the looper, your second overdub will have the latency added if you sync yourself to your first loop and not the metronome. And if you do a third overdub based on the second one, it will be delayed more compared to the metronome and so on.

I just try Mobius (free and very complex/good looper) and ran in the same issue. I was expecting Mobius to compensate the latency, but it seems not when running as a vst in Live (however, the standalone version run 100% sync). I think there is a way to set a latency compensation inside mobius vst but I didn't check that out yet.

You could also use live looper as a way to set the initial tempo and work with clip after that. That will be more trouble but depending of what you do it might work for you. Some stuff like multiple overdub will need many track so this may not be usable.
This was one of the suggestion I got in this thread :
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=171059

Note : A good way to test those latency/sync issue is to set your soundcard latency way high, like 100ms and use the metronome as a source (via mic and headphone). This way, it is very easy to see if your setup is sync or not. This simulate monitoring thru the air scenario (hand drum, etc).

Yves

[Pipotron4000]

For plugins not reporting their latency, you can try Voxengo Latency Delay :
http://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/
You can use it to compensate for external hardware latency too.

You can try it in your looper track, and if it don't work, in another input track routed to the looper track.

You can try the integrated Live track latency compensation (manual is your friend ) on the input track and route this track to your looper track.

I'm not sure it will solve your problem, but it is free and easy to test

[elwood88]

THX for the Tips i will try this out..

[nc2010]

The problem is that the looper can't compensate for the soundcard latency when monitoring is set to IN/Auto, and as you see, there is no audio to the looper when monitoring is set to OFF... So, you could try to lower your soundcard latency a bit more if possible. The issue will still be there but less noticable. Also, if you monitor thru the air (vocal, hand percussion, etc) and do overdub with the looper, your second overdub will have the latency added if you sync yourself to your first loop and not the metronome. And if you do a third overdub based on the second one, it will be delayed more compared to the metronome and so on.

I have the exact same problem with Looper device:

* Monitor = OFF => no sound recorded by the Looper (I do have a direct monitoring audio interface, so I hear the sound, but Looper doesn't record) => bad
* Mintor = IN or AUTO => no compensation of the latency => bad

Does anyone have a solution for this 12 years later?