A Live "No Latency Band"... is it possible?

ChiDJ · Post by **ChiDJ** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:40 pm

What about a MUSE Receptor

http://www.museresearch.com/

I have one. It's a rugged beast that runs VST's and works via an Ethernet cable, (Uniwire) thereby reducing your laptop's load significantly and, I would assume any VI latency.

Smellhound · Post by **Smellhound** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 11:35 pm

my band does exactly what you're talking about. it's programmed drums with live manipulation, plus keys/sound design, guitar & bass. the only non-software processing is done by the bass player's pedals (i use a midi controller to do all my effects within ableton). we also do live vocoder stuff. it's been working in rehearsals pretty well however our first show isn't for a couple weeks...so we'll see how it goes! check it out: myspace.com/nobot

anto · Post by **anto** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:20 am

hi, i have the same problem:
i would use ableton+guitar rig2+ amplitube ampeg+impulse for drums+ midi synths all into a laptop, as a one-tool-band device.
the big problem is the latency. with my edirol fa66 and asio4all drivers i can have 2.94ms of latency (input+output).
but the effective latency (increased by plug ins) is about 12 ms
this latency is very udible, and to paly with it is too difficult.
i.e. when i record a guitar track i have to add -12ms of delay to put it in a good way. otherwise the analogue instruments (bass guitar vocals) take off punch and groove to the rest of the song.

as vst fx i use a yamaha final master and some other tools in every track (delay, rev, compressors, eq), i'd remone all pulg ins to reduce some ms, but i don't want!

could someone suggest some way to get a really near zero latency?
maybe a motu ultralite could improove this?

i can't understand why people talk about 10-15 ms of latency as unaudible, to my hears (and also to my bend mates hears) seems absolutely unisable, to stay in time is too difficult, you have to play before the click to sound good!!!

thanks in advance
thanks

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:02 am

shit, 10 to 15 ms latency is great!

y'know, some audio interfaces allow you to monitor thru without latency.

also, you could go to a mixing board first and monitor from the channel instead of the return,

edit: oh shit, i guess we're talking about performance including real time application of effects, not tracking. Wellllllll, in that case it's just the nature of the beast. It's going to take some time to process that audio stream.

.lm.

anto · Post by **anto** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:49 am

i can't understand how people could play with that latency.
i try to explain (excuse me for my english):
i would reproduce a power trio situation (guitar bass drum) with everything runs into ableton (guitar with guitar rig2, bass with amplitube ampeg, v-drums with impulse, 2 voices, plus some midi effects and the possibility to add in real time loop lines from a pedalboard). everything joined trough ableton live, with a single soundcard...everything into a pair of power studio monitor...everything into a laptop and from 20 kg of total hardware weight....pro sounds without 500 kg of instruments, and every set up of sound in memory...my pop dream....

but there are some problems!!! i.e.:

ok, take a band, put this 3 guys with a real set up big valve amps, a screamin' real drum....you know what i mean
now take this 3 bad guys and put it near a digital set un as the one descrived belove (and with 15 ms of effective latency)....don't you experiment a decrease of general groove? more difficult to stay in time? a general decrease of spontaneity? in my opinion this fact do not depend from digital flavour, but from the apparently unpercettible latency.

otherwise, try to experimet to play guitar rig
- as standalone (1 ms of latency with my set up)
- or into live (with a mastering vst tool and some other toys, abourt 15 ms of latency in my case)

well to play giutar rig standalone is huge groovy friendly than to play it as vst into ableton live...
this because the whole ableton live processing adds a little percettible amount of latency, but enough to let you play less natural.
so in my opinion 10-15 ms is still too much to let you have a natural groove
any opinion? am I crazy? any (hardware or software) suggestion?

mcconaghy · Post by **mcconaghy** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:02 pm

anto wrote:i can't understand how people could play with that latency.
i try to explain (excuse me for my english):
i would reproduce a power trio situation (guitar bass drum) with everything runs into ableton (guitar with guitar rig2, bass with amplitube ampeg, v-drums with impulse, 2 voices, plus some midi effects and the possibility to add in real time loop lines from a pedalboard). everything joined trough ableton live, with a single soundcard...everything into a pair of power studio monitor...everything into a laptop and from 20 kg of total hardware weight....pro sounds without 500 kg of instruments, and every set up of sound in memory...my pop dream....

but there are some problems!!! i.e.:

ok, take a band, put this 3 guys with a real set up big valve amps, a screamin' real drum....you know what i mean
now take this 3 bad guys and put it near a digital set un as the one descrived belove (and with 15 ms of effective latency)....don't you experiment a decrease of general groove? more difficult to stay in time? a general decrease of spontaneity? in my opinion this fact do not depend from digital flavour, but from the apparently unpercettible latency.

otherwise, try to experimet to play guitar rig
- as standalone (1 ms of latency with my set up)
- or into live (with a mastering vst tool and some other toys, abourt 15 ms of latency in my case)

well to play giutar rig standalone is huge groovy friendly than to play it as vst into ableton live...
this because the whole ableton live processing adds a little percettible amount of latency, but enough to let you play less natural.
so in my opinion 10-15 ms is still too much to let you have a natural groove
any opinion? am I crazy? any (hardware or software) suggestion?

Consider this: Any drummer plying a set of V-drums (or any other kind of electronic drum system) is experiencing latency in the range of 6-10 ms, depending on system. Guitarists are experiencing latency if they're using real amps and stand several yards in front of their amps. You really don't notice latency until you're well above the 15 ms range, and with a decent audio interface your overall latency will lie around 6 or 7 ms - your band won't even notice a difference.
Granted, if you mention latency your guitarists will complain about it before you've even turned the system on, but usually you can hook them up with a few beers and they'll shut up eventually.

anto · Post by **anto** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:31 am

there's the possibility of a variation of latency during the performance? i mean. could the computer processing have variations of latency response due to the amount of the datas? i.e. sometimes 15 ms, but some second later 30 ms......this is the only way to explain my sensation.
ANYWAY I WILL EXPERIMENT TO LOW DOWN THE LATENCY WITH SOME BEERS!!!

pabloaugustus · Post by **pabloaugustus** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:05 pm

pasaba wrote:I am almost convinced on creamware but there are some things to consider
1)aside from zero on the dsp pluggins, what would the latency be on vsti's for instance? Would it be noticeable?
2)I also intend to use a midi keyboard, since some as the home 4.5 do not have midi in/out how would I be able to take advantage of the dsp synths from the keys? also how would it be with reason? will the card fix the current obvious latency I have on reason 3?

Thanx again

check out the muse. They connect via high speed ethernet and are very fast and versatile. You can check them out @sweetwater.

Kodama · Post by **Kodama** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:48 pm

I think part of the problem is Winders, I remember a slow iBook running OS X getting better latencey even with USB than my much faster Toshiba does.

Also, latencey won't auto-adjust, Live will just start to crackle and sputter if the CPU needs more latencey.

Meaning that you have to set a comfortable "high" latencey setting that works under pressure over time.

The more live midi control, audio inputs, fx, etc.. all add up, so test it out with your band.

Kodama · Post by **Kodama** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:49 pm

I seem to rember Rahlo, and maybe Pitch Black do this?

I think they use Motu, but not sure of the details...

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:42 am

It's true that using a simple guitar and real amp has latency (depending on where you stand) - and people don't really complain about this. But as soon as you introduce a laptop to the mix, people start to suffer a placebo effect.

It's true though that certain setups suffer bad latency. But if you are serious you would have done research and got the highest spec laptop you can afford, with the best interface your research and money can buy. There are many things you can do to help in regard to system specs (the better the spec of the laptop and interface, the lower you can set the buffer size in Ableton and the lower latency you'll get).

I don't know if anyone's ever played online games, but something like 2-15ms latency is magical, and I can't notice it in the audio world. I first played when it was 56k and pings of 200-500ms! Now that would be crap...

electropoet · Post by **electropoet** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:35 am

the best solution as far as i'm concerned is to use an external mixer.

if you want everything to (fx, routing, etc) to be done with minimal latency its gonna cost ya...like an apogee convertor and a mac tower.

a cheaper route would be to simply route all your bands instruments into a mixer (mackie 1604) then plug your computer outs into the mixer as well and mix from there. Monitor (output to mains-speakers) off the mixer...look...no latency. The computer compensates for the loops you record and will play back the loop in perfect time...plus you save valuable cpu resources. relying on a laptop to do all that work for you is setting you up for problems...murphy's law...it will die when you need it most...on stage.

your external mixer should have the flexiblity to route inputs into any number of aux sends so you could send sub mixs to different sound card inputs...or you could plug directly into the soundcard if you have 8 inputs...the MOTU microlites have cuemix which allow for zero latency input monitoring....perfect for live.

There are lots of solutions. But I don't think we're at a point where you can expect to plug all these instruments into a computer and push it to its limits with fx and such...we're just not there yet.

just my .02 cents.

Kodama · Post by **Kodama** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 6:29 pm

But if your computer dies and is important to the show, you're dead anyways.

I mean, who is gonna go "Karaoke time!!!" and just start singing if their setup goes down?

Even if you have a few "real" instruments, if your computer is 40% of the mix, you won't want to go on without it...

A Live "No Latency Band"... is it possible?

nobot

LATENCY VARIATIONS DURING THE PROCESS?

Re: LATENCY VARIATIONS DURING THE PROCESS?