Delay Compensation/Latency issue. Halp!

[remute99]

Does delay compensation actually do anything in Ableton?

Trying to record vocals and guitar into Live with a 256 buffer size I'm hearing noticable latency which is then reflected in the recording.
I can't take the bufffer any lower as I get crackling.

This was never an issue in Pro Tools (which has has no ADC) or Cubase or even eXT2.5.

I'm using Ableton Live latest beta, on a Mac Pro, latest OS and an Mbox Pro 2.

I'm supposed to be reording a singer/songwriter next week and would much rather use Live instead of Pro Tools.
Anyone help?

[jok]

Hi Remute99,

basically there are 2 ways Live handles latency while recording:

- if you record with monitoring switched to "In " or "Auto" Live is recording everything exactly as monitored - including the monitored latency. In this scenario it is of course important to minimize the buffer size to have a low overall latency to start off with.

- if you record with monitor switched to "Off" Live will shift the audio after the recording is finished. When you record this way, you need Direct monitoring to be enabled (you have to be able to listen to the incoming audio source before it is processed in your computer, directly from your soundcard or using an external mixer etc.).
The audio will be shifted by the estimated latency and the Driver Error Compensation value, which you can set in Live´s audio preferences. If you want to completely avoid latency problems, I would recommend to record this way.

Best,
Jörg

[remute99]

Hi Remute99,

basically there are 2 ways Live handles latency while recording:

- if you record with monitoring switched to "In " or "Auto" Live is recording everything exactly as monitored - including the monitored latency. In this scenario it is of course important to minimize the buffer size to have a low overall latency to start off with.

- if you record with monitor switched to "Off" Live will shift the audio after the recording is finished. When you record this way, you need Direct monitoring to be enabled (you have to be able to listen to the incoming audio source before it is processed in your computer, directly from your soundcard or using an external mixer etc.).
The audio will be shifted by the estimated latency and the Driver Error Compensation value, which you can set in Live´s audio preferences. If you want to completely avoid latency problems, I would recommend to record this way.

Best,
Jörg

Thanks for the reply. However, I don't have an external mixer - I'm gobsmacked that `live can't behave like every other DAW out there in this one vital respect.

[afro]

@jok
The two scenarios you list seems like common sense, but "direct monitoring" gives me a weird problem:
I've got a MOTU Ultralite with direct monitoring and since I do most of my stuff on external synth and drummachine I always monitor direct from soundcard with Live's monitoring set to "OFF". Since latency is rarely an issue I keep Live at a quite large buffer of 1024. When I've got Live, my synth and machinedrum all in sync (by hand, not by midi) and I try to record say the kickdrum, Live offsets the recording by what looks like the buffersize, resulting in playback out of sync!! When I reduce the buffersize the offset is equally reduced..
What am I missing/doing wrong?!?

-Andreas

EDIT: I just did a very simple test of the problem described above and the problem seems gone, so I must have done something else wrong...