Ableton Forum

rand wrote:Well you think you all have problems with latency & dynamic values of midi !...
Try being a midi drum pad player - like poor lil ol me!!!!!!
REALLY SUCKS but I do it anyways because of the sound pallet I can play.
rRand

but how much of that delay is caused by MIDI? it takes less than 1 mS to send a note on message. it's more likely that you're noticing the much greater latencies of the audio system and vsti's and fx.

nolus wrote:

rand wrote:Well you think you all have problems with latency & dynamic values of midi !...
Try being a midi drum pad player - like poor lil ol me!!!!!!
REALLY SUCKS but I do it anyways because of the sound pallet I can play.
rRand

but how much of that delay is caused by MIDI? it takes less than 1 mS to send a note on message. it's more likely that you're noticing the much greater latencies of the audio system and vsti's and fx.

my thoughts exactly

simpleton wrote:Right on. I can't believe how far we've come yet we're still using a 30 year old spec to to transmit the most precious of all data... notes!

actually, i think midi handles notes just fine. It's controller data that suffers.



.lm.

go listen to mouse on mars and tell me midi isn't capable anymore.

Hey - you're probably right about midi transmission speed
but it all adds up though the chain...

Plus midi slop is pretty big for a drummer no matter what the rig.
I've used most for over 15 years.
It can be managed & playable but it's sure not great.

And then there's the fact that my playing has a more sensitive dynamic range
then 127 values (& I've used the curve settings... they help but it's not great.)

So yea, midi...
it's opened up a whole world of possibilities for the masses
and done wonders during my career
but it's 2006 & as said it's time to get a version 2.
rRand

for the physical speed, midi is a 31kBaud standard, that's 31,000 packets of 10 bits per second. each packet has 8 data bytes, a bit for message type and a last one for parity (for error detection).

I couldn't find it during a quick google, but if the fastest beat in midi is 1/96 notes, at 120 bpm that's 2 milliseconds quantisation. good enough for me, but still quantised.

lm had a good point about controllers taking the hit. I had too many boxes checked in my midi settings in Live, I stripped them down and got a nice performance boost.

midi can be a bitch to learn. years ago I started to get it when I could hit spacebar on my PC and get cakewalk to control my hardware sampler, and 2 synths, start, stop, tempo sync, I was soooo stoked. Then I broke the setup and was PISSED, I had to do it again and again, eventually I got it. there's still a lot to midi I don't know or mess with.

The problem is added by interfaces specially USB and firewire which are twice slower then PCI adding 3.5 or more ms.
That is why hardware sequencer which is also midi still works better then computer

I heard there's this great thing called CV

there's still a lot to midi I don't know or mess with.

This is how I feel as well. I should've clarified in my question earlier, I do know and understand midi in theory, but I don't consider myself one who does much of anything with midi, even though I do things like make beats with Impulse and play instruments with Dimension Pro.

eh, I guess in the end it doesn't matter, so long as you get some music made! =)

DeadlyKungFu wrote: I couldn't find it during a quick google, but if the fastest beat in midi is 1/96 notes, at 120 bpm that's 2 milliseconds quantisation. good enough for me, but still quantised.

You'll get that much latency from moving your head a few more feet away from your monitors. I doubt you can actually hear this.

for the past twenty years no one seems to have had much of a problem.

it still going strong.

i use it everyday

its simplicity is it strength

its about as techincal as a knife and fork. even i have tried to build a controller

if you want to use a crossfader for quick cuts and throws buy a mixer.

simple.

rand wrote:Well you think you all have problems with latency & dynamic values of midi !...
Try being a midi drum pad player - like poor lil ol me!!!!!!
REALLY SUCKS but I do it anyways because of the sound pallet I can play.
rRand

wo.o.ord. My main problem with live triggering isn't even with midi, but rather with audio driver latency. Playing with pro drummers really ticks me off, because then 128 sample latency doesn't cut it anymore... urgh.


I'll say it loud and proud: I midi. Yup. I surely do. Can you get a proper OSC controller keyboard? No. Will it work directly with your external synths? No.

Will the midi protocol let you build a 35€ midi controller? Why yes it will!

but I think alot of people are confusing midi latency with audio buffer latency. totally different beasts. midi is extremely quick. audio buffers are where almost all of the problems lay.

don't believe it? hook up 2 hardware midi devices and try to feel the latency when triggering sounds. it's almost instantanious. probably down toward 1ms.

Johnisfaster wrote:but I think alot of people are confusing midi latency with audio buffer latency. totally different beasts. midi is extremely quick. audio buffers are where almost all of the problems lay.

don't believe it? hook up 2 hardware midi devices and try to feel the latency when triggering sounds. it's almost instantanious. probably down toward 1ms.

I just did some tests by looping a MIDI output back to an input, playing a MIDI clip from Live and recording the result. Looking at the delay between the original and the recording gives:-

Via MidiYoke round trip delay = 9ms
BCR2000 round trip delay = 15 ms
Firewire 410 round trip = 21 ms

WTF the actual physical midi transmition trough the MIDI cable should take no longer than 1mS(or nothing in the case of MIDI Yoke), so where is all the extra delay coming from? It must be due to software, drivers, Firewire/USB transmition delays and the BCR2000/FW410 circuitry and firmware.

Routing a midi signal through Pure Data adds another 60mS.

All theses figures are aproximate of course, because the delay varies quite a bit between one event and the next.

I'm surprised and annoyed by this discovery.