"Reduced latency when monitoring" messes with the timing of time-based effects

[CVKBT]

Hi there,

for quite a while I’ve noticed some inconsistent behavior when using tools like the Arpeggiator, and today I finally figured out why. Did you know about this? Is this a bug or a feature?

For example, if I use the Arpeggiator with a short, transient sound and set the sync rate to something like 1/8 or 1/16, the arpeggio doesn’t actually start right on the 1. There’s always a small delay. So no matter how I tweaked the settings, it would never be properly on the grid.

I tried so many different things to fix this behavior, and it turns out all this time the issue was the “Reduced latency when monitoring” option under “Options” in the top bar being turned on. I’ve always had that enabled to make MIDI playback smoother.

As soon as I turned it off, the Arpeggiator suddenly played perfectly on the 1 again. I assume this is just how the reduced latency feature works, but I honestly had no idea it could mess with the timing of time-based effects like this.

So I guess the takeaway is to keep “Reduced latency when monitoring” off unless you really need it for playing MIDI.

[chapelier fou]

Thanks for the explanation.
I would contact support and see if it’s expected.

[Angstrom]

Reduced latency when monitoring bypasses the set's automatic plugin delay compensation. The intended purpose is for if you are playing a synth sound live against a backing of tracks which have latency, and you wouldn’t want your synth playing to have the 10ms of latency which is incurred by your drum track compression (for example) . So in that case you would activate "Reduced latency when monitoring” to bypass the set's latency calculations and get your synth sound out of the main outputs as soon as possible (rather than waiting for the slowest channel to get done processing)

As the live manual says:

When Delay Compensation is on, the Reduced Latency When Monitoring option is available in the
Options menu. This option toggles latency compensation on and off for tracks which have input
monitoring on. When enabled, input-monitored tracks will have the lowest possible latency, but may
be out of sync with some other tracks in your Set, such as Return tracks, which are still delay
compensated. When disabled, all tracks will be in sync, but input-monitored tracks may have higher
latency.
Note that tempo-synced effects and other devices that get timing information from Live’s internal clock
may sound out of sync if they are placed in a device chain after devices which cause delay.