MIDI not lining up right

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:05 pm

Alright
Beatworld... I have been reading people have found this sorts the problem out...
I will try this and report back if it works.
Alex...
I have set my audio latency up to compensate for the extra amount latency introduced when recording externally as in the live lesson. If I add more to this figure, won't non-midi recording then be out of sync as I would have added too much compensation.This would result in live cutting off the start of recordings. Or do you mean that midi latency can be adjusted in the midi preferences for example?

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:39 pm

kineticUk wrote:Or do you mean that midi latency can be adjusted in the midi preferences for example?

Midi delay (latency) can be adjusted in the midi prefs for each midi input/output.
If that was what you're asking.
There's also a different option now for syncing up to external gear. There's song and pattern mode. I think pattern mode is for grooveboxes and drummachines.

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:05 pm

Thanks Hoffman2k
I will try out the midi delay adjustment
I am aware of the other option for syncing up to ext gear, I use the pattern mode when syncing to my ext drum machine.
I did try delay compensation on the midi output before but did not notice a difference, this was I think because I used to use ext sync alot which would probably stop this from taking effect.

Synthbuilder · Post by **Synthbuilder** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:24 pm

Unless I am mistaken the midi delay function only applies to the sync signal and not the midi note data. This is true on midi output and midi input.

I don't think you can affect the way Live records midi note on and off data in any way. Other than quantise that is.

I would try it without PDC, ie. turn off plug-in delay compensation, and see what happens. There's something funny about the way PDC is working in Live, and I can't quite put my finger on it right now.

Tony

deckme(N)tal · Post by **deckme(N)tal** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:30 pm

old midi-latency screw up problem in live...
has been reported several time, that is a live problem...not software...
try this...
create an empty midi channel...enable record-monitor off.
create another midi channel were you are going to record your stuff...enable record- monitor in..
i found that in this way midi recording from external controllers is a lot tigheter ....and disable PDC...

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:38 pm

Just to update everyone...
First of all thank you for everyones advice, I appreciate it
Checked in midi preferences and it seems that Synthbuilder is right. The compensation works on sync signal only, as I tried to compensate for the gap before first beat (Alex - This is 52ms on my machine) but no difference at all. Recorded audio still had 52 ms gap before first beat. I tried turning delay compensation off and back on but the recordings were exactly the same.
Now I am going to try deckme(N)tal approach.
I will post my results

Post by **Alex** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:29 pm

Hi kineticUk,

the delay compensation value in the MIDI preferences should not affect your problem as you do not MIDI sync your external device.

So let us try to keep it simple:

In an empty Live set without any effects & instrument, you make 1 audio and 1 MIDI track.
On the MIDI track you drag or make a simple MIDI clip with a note at each beat. You route this MIDI track to a port of external MIDI interface so that the MIDI data goes into your external synth.
The output of the synth is connected to the input of your audio interface so you set the input on the audio track to your audio interface and choose the corresponding channel and arm the track.

Now you can fire a scene to simultaneously play the MIDI clip and record the audio.

If you set the monitoring of the Audio to "In" or "Auto" the recorded audio clip will be delayed at least by the audio in + out latency.

If you set the monitoring of the Audio to "Off" the recorded audio clip will be compensated by the Overall Latency (which is by default audio input + output latency).

So when you record with monitoring set to "Off", do you still get this gap of 52ms?

regards,
/Alex

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:41 pm

Checked that out alex and it seems it is recording alot better
I no longer got the big gap at the beginning, instead a tiny bit of the first beat was missing and at the end of the audio clip it had recorded this.
So when it loops it plays fine on the second rotation. (It could be my audio latency is slightly over compensating and causing the little bit at the beginning to be cutoff)
Now I will check the lesson on setting my audio latency up again (See maybe the beta has improved this possibly)
Thanks for your help alex

Post by **Alex** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:03 pm

Hi kineticUk,

Now I will check the lesson on setting my audio latency up again

Yes, you should try to enter small values in the compensation value field in the audio preferences and check the recording afterwards.
If it seems that a bit to much is compensated you should start with a small negative value.

regards,
/Alex

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:18 pm

Hello Alex
I have just finished testing so heres whats happened...
I checked the lesson and set up latency (Mine is 23ms)
Then I attempted the test you told me for the midi. I was still getting a bit cutoff at the beginning, so I just adjusted the latency in audio prefernces until the loop recorded perfectly.
To get the recording perfect I ended up with a latency setting of 9ms (Not 23ms as for audio from Live audio track to Live In)
So now I can flip this back and forth if I have to record midi-audio
I am confused though why is there a 14ms difference?
Is this the time it takes live to send audio out ?
It would be good in future, if versions could auto adjust for this difference (Feature request maybe)
Anybody else with this problem should try - 14ms off your latency compensation value and see if it is the same across the board.
Thanks Everyone

Post by **Alex** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:51 am

Hi kineticUk,

I'm a bit confused that the overall latency for the midi-to-audio recording test is lower as for the audio-to audio.

Have you checked that when doing this test, you have not setup a track delay in the delay compensation field of the MIDI track? Or just disable PDC to get sure about this.

Which MIDI interface and which external synth do you used for this test?

regards,
/Alex

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 3:34 am

Alright Alex,
I am also confused but glad that I seem to be getting nearer to finding out whats going on here. (I can record ext midi-audio perfectly now simply by switching from 23 - 9 ms in Preferences, its not ideal but at least its a workaround for now)
To tell you the truth, I have never touched the midi delay (in track) ...ever. I keep it hidden and have never had any need to use it (I don't even understand what situation would call for using it, could you explain this ?). I will check it though to make sure.
I did check in the preferences and made sure everything midi wise was set to 0 ms. Again, the only time I have ever touched this was when I thought it might sort this delay thing out. So pretty much only last few days
So everything at the moment is pretty much zeroed. PDC is normally activated on my setup and when I last changed it for testing, it made no difference to the recording (The gap was exactly the same), although I have been told by other users midi is tighter without this activated (whats your view on this?).
Midi Interfaces is 8x8 Msport and my Instrument RolandS760
Could test this later with Korg ES1 and XStation Midi Interface and see if theres any difference (Also got acess to my bandmates ElektronMD/TritonLE/VirusTI on weekends) . However I have Cubase/ProTools and these really provide me with reference (No Problems in Cubase/ProToolsLE7 so I assume there are no hardware problems...I could be wrong (Conflicts) though so I will test this more if u think I need to.
What do you think is the best way to find out whats going on here ?
Let me know and I'll try again
Nice One Alex, appreciate you loooking into this.

Synthbuilder · Post by **Synthbuilder** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:57 am

I too get Live controlled midi instruments recorded late when I record them into Live. But I use the 'track delay settings' to alter this rather than muck about with the latency compensation in the preferences dialog box.

Setting track delay is easy and it works very well. Both negative [ie pre delay] and positive delays are possible.

Quite often you can use track delay settings to change the groove of the song. I pretty much always push the bass line ahead of the beat by a few mS. In Cubase the predelay is measured in ticks, but the mS that Live uses is very workable too.

The other thing to do is drag the audio file into place manually in the arrange window.

The question is why is this delay happening? That I don't know and I need to do some more experimentation in this. I don't have another recording app to try it on but I don't remember having this issue with Tracktion. I'm going to have a bash at using Sonar's demo and see what that one does.

Incidentally using any negative value track delays affects rewire input channels even if those rewire channels have no negative delay attributed to them. This is an ongoing problem I have with Live that I hope is being looked at as I speak.

Tony

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:21 am

Thanks for the advice Synthbuilder, this will help me a great deal (Saves a lot of bother, nice one).
I hope you post your comments about the rewire issues to [email protected], you should get a response from ableton that way (they have been very good responding to my emails). I too am concerned with the rewire issues and have posted on the bugs forum as well as sent beta team information.
Hopefully the rewire issues will be sorted before 5.2 gets released...

Synthbuilder · Post by **Synthbuilder** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:28 pm

Just posted something similar to this on the main forum.

I have tested Live's midi output and it is well within spec on my Intel P4/865 machine. I am getting 1 to 2mS of midi lag only from my midi interface.

I tested this by recording the midi data line as an audio signal. I needed to build a small circuit to interface between the digital output and audio input so as not to damage anything. These delays are typical of most USB interfaces and it can usually be ignored.

The delay in the audio output from the synths is entirely down to the synths themselves. My D-50 natively lags by 12mS or so, and this is delay I was getting. I am suprised at this level of latency within a hardware synth, but its a very old model, and I guess things have gotten better with the newer stuff.

As for the rewire tracks being confused by negative track delay settings on other channels, this has already been reported to the support team. I hope they understand the nature of the problem because I can't use Reason without this being fixed.

Tony