MIDI Input lag -- don't group MIDI and audio tracks then use FX?!

[jonljacobi]

So, i was trying to play in some piano parts to an existing song. Bad lag/latency made it almost impossible. I knew it had to be something in the song as I tested with a new song and no lag. Also, the MIDI input light didn't seem laggy, just the sound from the virtual instrument.

First thing I did was remove the mastering FX rack from the master track. This made it a bit more bearable, but the lag was still more than I'd like.

I went around putting "No input" on all the MIDI tracks I could find. Nada. Same with turning off "Keep Latency"

Then I took a good look at my vocal group and realized that I had a bunch of MIDI tracks for ACE Studio vocals along with the audio track vocals I'd recorded. This in and of itself didn't seem to matter, but the fact that I had a vocal FX rack on the group did.

I first deleted the FX rack to test, and when the latency dropped to near normal, I moved the MIDI vocal tracks to outside the audio vocal group so. could put the FX rack back. However, this may be observer syndrome, but I'm not entirely sure that there wasn't some sort of link still in place. It was very subtle, but I thought I could detect a bit more MIDI lag with that vocal FX rack in place. I guess the entire latency compensation engine is in play.

Does anyone know if the FX tracks contribute to this phenomenon? Doesn't seem like much if they do. But I'd like to be able to save these as presets just in case.

So the moral of the story is don't use laggy FX racks or single FX on mixed MIDI/audio groups or the master track, or possibly anywhere until you're finished recording MIDI. Disabling them doesn't help, which is at least one reason why perhaps Live should allow you to truly bypass them as well as disable output. For now, I just save them as presets and bring them back in when I'm ready to mix. As I was in this song before I decided it needed some piano.

[jonljacobi]

I suppose as an alternative you could save a mix, record your MIDI in a fresh project containing only the mixdown, then save the track and open it in the original song. if you've done a lot of work mixing, that is.

[jonljacobi]

Also note that this was at 44.1 with a 64 sample buffer and a listed latency of around 2 ms. If you have the computer and audio interface that allow it, you might up the sample rate and lower the buffer while recording MIDI.