Ableton Forum

i think iain sums it up pretty neatly.

Alex wrote: But I still do not understand exactly why you want to have it compensated although you monitor the signal.

Alex, I really do not want to be rude. I love Live to death and I'm true supporter of the product and specialy the company. But in regards to your question above, I on the other hand do not understand why Live behaves the way it does? I swear I'm not being a punk or mean or anything, but what are the special circumstances to why Live has the delay when in/auto is on? What is the purpose?

Alex,

Sorry I wasnt very helpful in my last post. I'll refrain from further comment as I frankly dont know what else to say.

Best Regards

I swear I'm not being a punk or mean or anything, but what are the special circumstances to why Live has the delay when in/auto is on? What is the purpose?

Ok, I will try

Let us assume we have a simple Live set with 2 tracks, 1 Audio and 1 MIDI track. In the audio track is an audio clip playing, let us say a simple 4/4 drum loop. In the MIDI track we have any kind of virtual instrument.
I have also an externally MIDI keyboard to play the instrument in track 2.
Record quantization is set to None for this demonstration.


Now I want to record MIDI in track 2 and I want to have it in sync with the audio clip of tracks 1.


1.) I want to monitor the signal while I'm recording

So I set the monitoring of track 2 to "Auto" and arm the track. Now I can play on the external MIDI keyboard and hear the instrument in track 2 with a delay of Audio Out latency + Latency of the instrument itself.

I fire the audio clip in track1 because I need as my musical reference.
Then I fire a clip slot in track 2 to start the recording.
Now I play on the external MIDI keyboard what I want to play and while doing this I try to get the output of the instrument to get in sync with the audio clip playing in track 1 by listening to both of them.
This means my playing hand "compensates" the delay of Audio Out latency + Instrument latency.
So if I would play accurate enough the recorded clip would be in sync with the audio clip when playing. So there is no need for another compensation as my hand already did it.

So the important point here is that if the output of my (recording) instrument track is during the record in sync with the audio clip running in track 2 then also the final recorded MIDI clip will be in sync to the audio clip.
(When using a plug-in you must have PDC enabled for playing)


2.) I do NOT want to monitor the signal while I'm recording

So I set the monitoring to "Off" arm track 2 and fire the audio clip in track 1 and fire a slot in track 2 to start the recording. But because the monitoring is off I cannot here the what I'm playing (unless my external MIDI keyboard would be a synth which again is directly connect to my external mixer).
So as I cannot hear the output of my instrument in track 2 I try to get the playing on the MIDI keyboard in sync with audio clip in track 1.
So when I want to have a note on a certain beat of the audio clip I press the key on the MIDI keyboard exactly the same time as I hear the beat of the audio clip. So my MIDI note comes to late in by the Audio Out Latency and therefore the final MIDI clip will be compensated (moved forward) by this value.

(Note: Currently the MIDI compensation also uses the Audio In latency which is definitively wrong and will be still fixed within the next beta)




I hope this is somehow understandable. Now I would like to know how you work when you record.

regards,
/Alex

Alex wrote: 1.) I want to monitor the signal while I'm recording

So I set the monitoring of track 2 to "Auto" and arm the track. Now I can play on the external MIDI keyboard and hear the instrument in track 2 with a delay of Audio Out latency + Latency of the instrument itself.

I fire the audio clip in track1 because I need as my musical reference.
Then I fire a clip slot in track 2 to start the recording.
Now I play on the external MIDI keyboard what I want to play and while doing this I try to get the output of the instrument to get in sync with the audio clip playing in track 1 by listening to both of them.
This means my playing hand "compensates" the delay of Audio Out latency + Instrument latency.
So if I would play accurate enough the recorded clip would be in sync with the audio clip when playing. So there is no need for another compensation as my hand already did it.

So the important point here is that if the output of my (recording) instrument track is during the record in sync with the audio clip running in track 2 then also the final recorded MIDI clip will be in sync to the audio clip.
(When using a plug-in you must have PDC enabled for playing)

Hi Alex - as always thanks for your input, patience & responses. The scenario you've outlined above is exactly how many people work with VSTi's. The problem that many of us are having is that whilst we are playing, and compensating in real time for the latencies involved, once we have stopped playing the recorded result then appears to be marginally out of time.

To illustrate the point let's take your analogy further - if I have a loop of 4 bass drums on track 1 and set it to play as a reference, and then, on track 2, set up an Impulse with another bass drum, arm the track, quantisation off/monitoring on, hit record and play along in time - with me so far?

Once I have finised recording and examine the recording MIDI part it is apparent that either I have a really crappy sense of rhythm or that something is offseting all the MIDI notes I have played in. What several people appear to be suggesting isn't a huge change in the monitoring or audio aspects of Live - merely that once the MIDI recording process is finished that Live automatically removes the compensation & latencies involved so that the recorded MIDI part is once more exactly how we played it. As LesC's post stated the offset required to correct this is merely the combined figure from the latencies in the Preferences dialogue.

Once again - thanks for your patience Alex.

Hi Nod,

Once I have finised recording and examine the recording MIDI part it is apparent that either I have a really crappy sense of rhythm or that something is offseting all the MIDI notes I have played in

Ok I agree if that is true it would indicate that the MIDI data is not recorded correctly. I will try to check this too.

regards,
/Alex

Alex wrote:Hi Nod,

Ok I agree if that is true it would indicate that the MIDI data is not recorded correctly. I will try to check this too.

regards,
/Alex

Cheers mate - appreciated

(Note: Currently the MIDI compensation also uses the Audio In latency which is definitively wrong and will be still fixed within the next beta)




this beta totally gives me the creeps......
I had vst's like microtonic, that I didnot have to compensate for totally run out of time once I installed the new beta...
strangely after the install also on the 5.02 I had the same thing...all of a sudden I had to put delaycompensation of -63 on the microtonic, while as before the beta none?!
that it passes this on too 5.02 freaks me out..
also my buffersize has to be sufficiently bigger with the beta, (windows XP asiodigidesigndriver) to get the same result as in 5.02;
meaning for a certailn set that I had to go up to 4096 samples!!
in stead of 512
I now uninstalled the beta, and everything is like it was...
but shure as hell I don't understand what was going on..
maybe offtopic a bit here, but why live behaves so strangely on midi compared to other sequencers gives me the shivers.
I noticed that I became a lot more programming like, cauz my timing seemed to be even worse then I thought.
apperently other forces are at work here?
hope you guys work it out..
would be really nice stopping this programming virus i catched since live
p.s is this only virtual instruments?
I could swear I had the same problems with my hardware synths, recording them into live as midi.....before I started programming that was

get rid of any midi delay. thanks!

um...alex...I think the assumption that you try and play the notes ahead of the beat so the sound is in time might be wrong....unless you were playing a single note drum hit or similar. If you are playing a complex rhythmic 2 handed piano part or similar then it's a little difficult to program your hands to play (latency) earlier. It's easy enough if you are just playing one note. When playing a more complex or improvised part you just play in time and ignore the slight delay before you hear the sound.

that's my 2c.

i havn't had the chance to try with a midi controller, but i tried for curiosity in live 5.02 on pc , recording 2 midi tracks with the pc keys, one track with monitor in and one track with monitor off, global quantization off

i havn't used any vst or instrument, i just recorded some midi notes following the metronome at hear.

explored the midi clips and found that, ....
the notes were placed in the exact right position and
the recorded notes in both the midi tracks are exactly at the same position.(no delay)

so with the pc keys as controller turning monitor in or off doesn't add any delay to the note's position

can anyone confirm?

i hope this helps to figure out the midi monitoring problem and that it will get fixed soon

cheers

madlab wrote:

LesC wrote:OK
Let me reiterate: The Overall Latency in Audio Prefs reads:
14.0 ms + 12.0 ms + 0.00 ms = 25.9 ms
If I change it to read:
14.0 ms + 12.0 ms + -25.9 ms = 0.00 ms
Then I can record MIDI clips with monitoring set to AUTO or IN without inducing the aforementioned delay in the MIDI clips
BUT.....
entering this negative setting in the Overall Latency adjustment introduces a recorded delay when recording audio clips (no matter what the monitor setting is), so thats not-so-good.

Is the last sentence true ? I always thought that if monitoring is set to 'off', my audio timing would be ok.

Nobody on this one ??? This is a side effect of the midi latency bug so it's not THAT ot

CopyRightJustice wrote:A workaround for the recorded midi latency problem is to create two tracks with and without monitoring yes?

so why can't this be done behind the scenes automaticaly?

Now comes the clincher, if this is an issue for you, then why not record MIDI on both tracks, then import the MIDI timing you like from the non monitored track? It is quite possible it's not a bug, have any of you compared this to another DAW directly?

Machinesworking wrote:

CopyRightJustice wrote:A workaround for the recorded midi latency problem is to create two tracks with and without monitoring yes?

so why can't this be done behind the scenes automaticaly?

Now comes the clincher, if this is an issue for you, then why not record MIDI on both tracks, then import the MIDI timing you like from the non monitored track? It is quite possible it's not a bug, have any of you compared this to another DAW directly?

In other DAW (DP and Cubase on OSX, Logic OS9), I don't have to create two midi tracks to record without latency.

Hi folks,

just as a short note we found a bug concerning MIDI recording that could explain the problems some users have. As I guessed it depends a bit on the scenario you use to record MIDI. I will explain it a bit later.

regards,
/Alex