Hey everyone.
I get 2ms latency with a new live set, but then on a trak with lots of plugs and fx latency gets horrible... any ideas on whats causing this?
thanks
Latency issues
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Bassic Dave
- Posts: 147
- Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2006 6:10 am
- Location: San Diego
Latency issues
"Without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave." - G.I. Gurdjieff
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The reason it goes up when you add plugins is because live also uses an additional buffer for each plugin.
You can clearly see what happens if you turn delay compensation off, put the same clip on two tracks. Find some plugin effect that has no delay itself and can be set to settings that do nothing to the audio (for example kjaerhus classic compressor meets these requirements)... Then add an instance to one of the tracks. Then add another one, and another one, and you'll clearly hear the additional delay being added in there with each plugin.
With delay compensation on, it basically prevents the problem of the tracks becoming out of time by figuring out which track has the most latency, then adding latency to all the other ones to make them match. So, your latency gets horrible, as you say.
This is basically why I don't use ableton in my live rig. But, there is a partial solution. In your preferences, go to the CPU tab and set the plugin buffer size as low as it will go. This way it is at least adding as little latency as possible.
You can clearly see what happens if you turn delay compensation off, put the same clip on two tracks. Find some plugin effect that has no delay itself and can be set to settings that do nothing to the audio (for example kjaerhus classic compressor meets these requirements)... Then add an instance to one of the tracks. Then add another one, and another one, and you'll clearly hear the additional delay being added in there with each plugin.
With delay compensation on, it basically prevents the problem of the tracks becoming out of time by figuring out which track has the most latency, then adding latency to all the other ones to make them match. So, your latency gets horrible, as you say.
This is basically why I don't use ableton in my live rig. But, there is a partial solution. In your preferences, go to the CPU tab and set the plugin buffer size as low as it will go. This way it is at least adding as little latency as possible.
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leedsquietman
- Posts: 6659
- Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:56 am
- Location: greater toronto area
To be fair, this problem is not isolated to Live - it exists with any DAW software.
Besides, you don't need to be running your rig at 2ms latency anyway, for playback of audio, you can step it up to 20 ms no problem. 2ms latency is great for recording instruments, vocals, etc but for playback it's not necessary. A lot of people mix on 512 or 1024 samples to ensure the smoothest mixdown possible.
And if you were to step up your latency, it would almost certainly take load off your CPU which can lead to dropouts and crackles and pops etc.
Besides, you don't need to be running your rig at 2ms latency anyway, for playback of audio, you can step it up to 20 ms no problem. 2ms latency is great for recording instruments, vocals, etc but for playback it's not necessary. A lot of people mix on 512 or 1024 samples to ensure the smoothest mixdown possible.
And if you were to step up your latency, it would almost certainly take load off your CPU which can lead to dropouts and crackles and pops etc.
http://soundcloud.com/umbriel-rising http://www.myspace.com/leedsquietmandemos Live 7.0.18 SUITE, Cubase 5.5.2], Soundforge 9, Dell XPS M1530, 2.2 Ghz C2D, 4GB, Vista Ult SP2, legit plugins a plenty, Alesis IO14.
The plugin buffer is avoidable, it's extra latency that Live adds for whatever reason... I can't say I've tested it in f.e. Cubase as I only use it for production and not live purposes, so maybe some other DAWs do a similar thing, but stuff like Usine and some other live-use hosts don't have the plugin buffer issue (of course you still must be cautious of plugins that have their own latency).