midi sync delay out... does it work?

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Winterpark
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midi sync delay out... does it work?

Post by Winterpark » Sun Dec 26, 2004 2:41 pm

i am going completely bonkers or does the "midi sync delay" do absolutely nothing??

i am trying to get send a bass line to my micromodular that is all 16th notes in time with one that comiling from the simpler... they are WAY out of wack, and my solution of adjusting the sync delay output (range from -300ms to +300ms in the preferences) seems to do nothing at all...

my temp solution was just to record the track into audio... which i was gonna do anyway... but this thing of the sync delay is buggin me....

maybe it's too late in the evening/morning for me...

.... but if anyone wants to check this sync delay thing actually does anything on their system, that'd be excellent....

-am
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ozric@e.om
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Post by ozric@e.om » Sun Dec 26, 2004 6:48 pm

Instead of compensating the MIDI sync delay, try to compensate with early audio.

Click the AUDIO tab of the preferences set the total sum to zero by adding a negative value in the box that will be same MS as ur audio latency.

It work great for me and I'm syncing 3 external
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Winterpark
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Post by Winterpark » Mon Dec 27, 2004 1:25 am

ozric@e.om wrote:Instead of compensating the MIDI sync delay, try to compensate with early audio.

Click the AUDIO tab of the preferences set the total sum to zero by adding a negative value in the box that will be same MS as ur audio latency.

It work great for me and I'm syncing 3 external

thnaks for responding....

I've already set up my audio latency, as said in the manual.... and that works just fine... i'm also recording live instruments, so i don't want to go back and forth changing settings when i gotta record midi-audio.

i guess i'm just interested in what is happening with the 'midi sync compensation' not working properly? can anyone else confirm/deny that this works?

-am

dpel
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Post by dpel » Mon Dec 27, 2004 5:24 am

i have to tweak this setting for midi beat clock to external
synths/hardware. i always end up at -63-65 ish.

works for me i guess.
:?
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Winterpark
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Post by Winterpark » Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:54 am

dpel wrote:i have to tweak this setting for midi beat clock to external
synths/hardware. i always end up at -63-65 ish.

works for me i guess.
:?
thanks for answering... i'm still getting no noticable change when i adjust either way.... i've double checked with a different midi interface and all!

um it may be a mac thing, or possible 'user error'.... any OSX people out there want to check this to see if it's a bug? or let me know what the hell i'm doing wrong?

-am

icedsushi
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Post by icedsushi » Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:17 pm

Hey guys,

I've been having the same problem and after a week of beating my head against the wall I think I've finally figured it out...

Live4 currently only has the option to sync delay midi *clock* NOT midi *notes*. I've been reading some other posts & people aren't making the distinction between the two. For the time being, if you are sending midi clock only, you have the option to set a sync delay for it. If live is sending actual notes to your hardware, there is currently no setting to compensate for the latency so you should sequence or trigger the notes from your hardware. Unfortunately, In the case of the micromodular, you aren't syncing anything to midi clock so the midi clock sync delay isn't going to help you. Of course you can also work around it by rendering to audio, but you're still going to have to move it manually by the latency amount when saving the file. Hopefully, Ableton will add a midi note output sync delay soon, but who knows, maybe there were issues or it was too many features to add at one time with this version. :?

Secondly, be sure to monitor the output of your hardware through live only. Make sure the audio from the hardware synth is going into live through an audio track and back out of live with the rest of the mix as software monitoring. That way, the synth is seeing the same latency that everything else is. Otherwise, if you monitor it directly through a mixer or directly from your interface into the monitors, it will actually be AHEAD in time compared to everything in live. Plus, if you do it this way, you can get a more exact setting because when you send it to audio, you can measure your midi latency more accurately by looking at the sound file. When I tested mine, I found i had to set the midi clock delay to -46ms. I hope this helps! :wink:

vince watson
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Post by vince watson » Wed Jan 12, 2005 10:27 pm

mm..strange one mate....my sync out is set to -36ms and my MPC2000xl is timed out perfectly...

BUT!!

and this is a big but....

Once i stop the laptop from running, If my mpc2000xl is not totally at 1.0.0 bars after the pause and i press play on the mac again, the sync goes haywire...and its only possible to fix it by double pressing the stop button on ableton and then putting the mpc back to 1.0.0.

a real pain in the arse when your composing your structure for a livegig.....
Macbook Pro (Early2011) 17" Antiglare Hi Res 2.2, 8gb Ram, RME Multiface Expresscard, Ableton 7.18, Ableton 8.2.1, Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Winterpark
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Post by Winterpark » Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:23 pm

icedsushi wrote:Hey guys,

I've been having the same problem and after a week of beating my head against the wall I think I've finally figured it out...

Live4 currently only has the option to sync delay midi *clock* NOT midi *notes*. I've been reading some other posts & people aren't making the distinction between the two. For the time being, if you are sending midi clock only, you have the option to set a sync delay for it. If live is sending actual notes to your hardware, there is currently no setting to compensate for the latency so you should sequence or trigger the notes from your hardware. Unfortunately, In the case of the micromodular, you aren't syncing anything to midi clock so the midi clock sync delay isn't going to help you. Of course you can also work around it by rendering to audio, but you're still going to have to move it manually by the latency amount when saving the file. Hopefully, Ableton will add a midi note output sync delay soon, but who knows, maybe there were issues or it was too many features to add at one time with this version. :?

Secondly, be sure to monitor the output of your hardware through live only. Make sure the audio from the hardware synth is going into live through an audio track and back out of live with the rest of the mix as software monitoring. That way, the synth is seeing the same latency that everything else is. Otherwise, if you monitor it directly through a mixer or directly from your interface into the monitors, it will actually be AHEAD in time compared to everything in live. Plus, if you do it this way, you can get a more exact setting because when you send it to audio, you can measure your midi latency more accurately by looking at the sound file. When I tested mine, I found i had to set the midi clock delay to -46ms. I hope this helps! :wink:

cool! thanks for all that info... i reckon the monitor thru live is where i have been going wrong!... i have been letting the m-box do the monitoring, and this has, as you say, made it Ahead of everything else.

ta.

-am

Macrostructure
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Post by Macrostructure » Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:10 pm

Just a thought but you have got your MM set to receive clock data haven't you?

ms

Winterpark
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Post by Winterpark » Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:17 pm

Macrostructure wrote:Just a thought but you have got your MM set to receive clock data haven't you?

ms
yeah.... done that on some patches.... i should check out if those patches are in sync or not!

the main problem was just with midi clips of Notes sent from live though, i havn't really noticed the problem with patches on the MM that are Midi Clock Synced... but will check it out.

-am

icedsushi
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Post by icedsushi » Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:33 pm

am wrote:cool! thanks for all that info... i reckon the monitor thru live is where i have been going wrong!... i have been letting the m-box do the monitoring, and this has, as you say, made it Ahead of everything else.

ta.

-am
You're welcome. Part of writing that was confirming it to myself again, haha. :)

I have a Virus hardware synth and I was trying to send midi notes to it from live. The arpeggiator on the Virus was synced to clock so it was syncing rather well. Depending on what notes are live triggered and which ones are generated by the clocked arp, I think things can get a little sloppy with the combination of the two. I haven't tried it without the arpegiattor initiated on the Virus yet. I'm assuming single notes sent from live will lag behind compared to arpegiatted ones, however I haven't listened close enough. I'll let you know what I come up with tonight.
Last edited by icedsushi on Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

icedsushi
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Post by icedsushi » Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:18 pm

vince watson wrote:mm..strange one mate....my sync out is set to -36ms and my MPC2000xl is timed out perfectly...
Seems normal....everyone should have a different sync delay depending on the delay introduced by their specific hardware. This is the reason for the option to adjust the setting. For example, dpel said -64 works for his setup.

icedsushi
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Post by icedsushi » Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:23 am

Ok, I got a chance to try midi notes triggering the Virus from Live. As expected, without the help of the clocked arpeggiator there was a midi delay and adjusting the sync delay had absolutely no effect. I thought I would confirm that just to be sure...

Now here's what I found interesting: My drum machine requires -46ms for its clock to be synced with live. But, I looked at some sound files from the virus and it would need about -30ms if there were a sync delay for midi notes. So each piece of hardware has a different delay requirement. You would need to be able to enter different sync delay setting in preferences for each synth. So if you have a few synths and enter a predelay for one of them, the other ones could still be off by a few ms. Of course if the timing is that critical, and you are working with midi clock, you can just change the sync delay before you render each instrument to audio.

Whew!

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