is your midi recording OFF?

phased · Post by **phased** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:31 pm

If the midi is really terrible, I might not have bought Live to begin with. Should I have thoroughly tested the demo? If so, why does the consumer have to be a beta tester? I really thought I was done spending money on this little studio thing. I guess I'll start looking at some other demos. But I'm still hoping somebody's midi gear works great with this test for Live. Especially an all around audio/midi firewire device with the same clock for both. At least some other people should post test results, so if it is a bug, live can acknowledge it, and potentially fix it!

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:38 pm

ok ok, sorry, i didn't have time last night after work (had to see my little sister's last field hockey game of the season, she's 17 years my junior). But i promise to post some sort of test result soonish, however, tonight might be shot too, cause i'm going trick or treating with my little siblings (there's 3 more of em).

I will say this, though ---> I record a lot of stuff unquantized (keys mostly, cause i do actually have some keyboard chops and quantizing my playing would kill the feel) and i don't have this kind of problem. I would notice, i can promise you.

i would say in the meantime to try the things mentioned in the thread: play with your buffer, and try a different midi interface if you happen to have one.

don't sweat it too hard yet, i can guarentee that live wouldn't have made it this far if the midi recordings were flawed in that way.

.lm.

phased · Post by **phased** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:15 pm

Cool man, thanks for the hope

I'll keep trying stuff. Let me know what you find, whenever you get a chance...

audio engineer · Post by **audio engineer** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:36 am

I'll apologize in advance if my first attempt to answer this shows up sometime later, as I did not see anything after I typed it in the first time, and hit preview.

So the reason MIDI playback sounds out of sync with Abletons built-in metronome - even though you recorded your MIDi track in sync to this metronome - is that the metronome signal (likely a sample) is audio, or goes thru the audio chain with whatever its latency is. Since it is not being played back thru the MIDI chain (its not a MIDI metronome), audio and unqauntized MIDI can be more/less out of sync (and I think you will hear a sync difference even with only tens of milliseconds of audio latency alongside unqauntized MIDI data).

I suspect that people who automatically quantize while recording (or after recording) may not notice (or care) about this. This will re-align the MIDI data, hiding the problem, though they might notice some MIDI note ons are missing from the beginning of the sequence depending upon how large the audio latency time is.

But I agree/assert that you should be able to do everything unquantized - and audio and MIDI should be handled and delay comensated equally well - which is not yet the case with Ableton live (it's clearly more disposed towards audio rather then MIDI with a bias towards everything being quantized).

But there are a couple of ways you can work around this:

(1) Do not use Abletons built-in audio metronome for recording MIDI. Instead, add a MIDi track with a simple drum machine or sample, and program that as you like on the downbeat etc. to be your MIDI metronome. (It's no coincidence that the metronome in other programs like Logic are MIDI and not audio). So you will always playback the track with your MIDI metronome while recording new MIDI data on other tracks.

(2) Look in the audio preferences to see what the audio latency is. Let's say its 20 ms latency with your current audio bufer size. Record onto your MIDI track as before, playing in sync with Abletons audio metronome. Now before playing back the MIDI track, down at the bottom of the MIDi track, set the track delay to be the negative value of the audio latency. So given the above, you would set the MIDI track latency to be -20 ms, (and repeat this for any other MIDI tracks). Again, it would be nice if the program did this for you.

The down side to (2) is that if you change your audio buffer size, then the latency will change, and you will have to re-adjust this negative offset (which advances the timing of the MIDI data to be in sync with the audio metronome) on all your MIDI tracks. Again, I think Ableton should do this automatically as part of full delay compensation.

You also should be able to fix any MIDI tracks you already recorded with method (2) .

Maybe someday Ableton will be more like a fully functional DAW handling audio and MIDI data equally well with more extensive delay compensation. The whole clip based model of live and/or improvisational clipped base sequencing is exciting, and a minimal interface can be nice - but it should not have to compromise working with unquantized data if you prefer to work that way.

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:52 am

well, i managed to flake out on this yet again. Sadly when i opened up live tonight i spent 3 hours working on a dope µtonic program rather than testing out your problem. Oh well!

uhh, anyway, i'll probably lay some (unquantized as always) key parts on it tomorrow, which will be the perfect opportunity for me to do a little test action.

and, uh, audioengineer, i'm not sure what you're basing your claims on, but when i turn on my metronome in live it matches up perfectly with my µtonic (virtual drum machine) midi track....

.lm.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:58 am

audio engineer wrote:
(1) Do not use Abletons built-in audio metronome for recording MIDI. Instead, add a MIDi track with a simple drum machine or sample, and program that as you like on the downbeat etc. to be your MIDI metronome. (It's no coincidence that the metronome in other programs like Logic are MIDI and not audio). So you will always playback the track with your MIDI metronome while recording new MIDI data on other tracks.

just checking -- hope i'm not the only one to whom this makes no sense?

phased · Post by **phased** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:19 pm

Well... try and figure this one out. I turn off delay compensation. Set driver error compensation to zero. Turn OFF the metronome. No audio playing, nothing (other than probably being synced to the audio clock?) Record an unquantized midi part. Upon playback, the hits don't line up with respect to each other. If I shift the playback waveform so the first hit lines up, successive hits are off by random amounts, up to ~1.5ms. I believe the tempo was 120, so this isn't a result of ppq?

What's truly odd is that I downloaded the SONAR demo, and did the same thing. Instead of each hit being off by a random amount, most of the hits line up EXACTLY, and the ones that are off (seemingly random) are off by the same amount each time, close to 3ms. !?!?!

Truly bizarre, having a hell of a time trying to figure out what is going on, and whether this is normal or not.

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 10:43 pm

i've got no issues with midi timing in live and, like someone else said, i would notice. not to say your problem isn't real, just think it may be something in your setup (i tried mine on both mac and pc, with an old emagic midibus and an xstation, no issues).

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 2:05 am

OK, i just did a little test, here's what i did:

unplugged my motu828 so i would be using just the internal soundcard on my powerbook

plugged my microKontrol into ye olde usb port (figured i should try to emulate your set up as best as possible)

loaded up my tr-606 preset on the impulse.

selected my midi track with the impulse in the "audio from" input on an audio track.

armed both tracks for recording.

plonked out a quick beat.

copyed em to the arrange view so i could visually compare as well as listen.

well, i do get some phasey action going on, but i'm not surprised about that, i'm sure i could get it better if i readjusted my audio latency after unplugging the motu, but i'll bet it's never going to be 100% perfect. but upon visual inspection, the audio was always the same distance behind the midi note. i didn't get any variation in the lateness.

i dunno, i wish i had something else to tell you. i dunno whats up with your set up, yo.

.lm.

phased · Post by **phased** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 5:40 pm

Thanks for trying... I guess if I ever figure it out, I'll post about it.

GaryTracks · Post by **GaryTracks** » Sun Nov 05, 2006 12:49 am

audio engineer wrote:

(1) Do not use Abletons built-in audio metronome for recording MIDI. Instead, add a MIDi track with a simple drum machine or sample, and program that as you like on the downbeat etc. to be your MIDI metronome.

That seems fucking brilliant to me! I've not yet been happy with my MIDI grooves. It's hard to tell sometimes whether my playing is off, or Live is. It's probably both. I'm gonna make a metronome-MIDI loop.

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:28 am

Hmm, what is the explanation why Live's metronome would be different than a midi note metronome?

OK, I finally tried to do the test. A dialogue comes up that this file was created w/a newer version of Live and can't be opened. I'm running 5.2.2. Is this for Live 6 people only?

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:33 am

icedsushi wrote:Hmm, what is the explanation why Live's metronome would be different than a midi note metronome?

well its not different.

or at least its not here. if i make a 1/4 note click with impulse it matches the metronome perfectly.

.lm.

phased · Post by **phased** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 am

icedsushi wrote:Hmm, what is the explanation why Live's metronome would be different than a midi note metronome?

OK, I finally tried to do the test. A dialogue comes up that this file was created w/a newer version of Live and can't be opened. I'm running 5.2.2. Is this for Live 6 people only?

I made it on 6, sorry. Wow and somebody was going to do the test, hah.

If I draw in midi quarter notes, they are in sync with the metronome, so I don't know what that was about. They may be shifted in time (latency) but that can be adjusted.

But when I record unquantized midi (banging out beats with the padKontrol), they play back different. With the SAME setup, energyXT plays back exactly what I heard while monitoring, so I think there is an issue with Live.