Ableton Forum

WaveRider wrote:

popslut wrote: Yes, but how are you supposed to hear what you are playing if monitoring [on your midi track] is set to "off"?

well that is possible(and common) if I play a midi synth with local set to ON. (that means when the synth keys trigger the synth engine directly, meaning you do not have to loop midi thru live)

I was wondering what would be the use of the 'off' setting, but this must be it.

However, if you, like me, only have rack synths and use a midi controller, it wont work. The problem is that, unlike soundcards, most midi interfaces don't have a 'direct monitoring' option.

murphf wrote:The problem is that, unlike soundcards, most midi interfaces don't have a 'direct monitoring' option.

The reason manufacturers don't deem it necessary to equip their interfaces with a 'direct monitoring' option is that with every sequencer except Ableton Live you don't need it.

Ableton Live is the only sequencer which significantly delays your midi data as it passes through.

I'm still hoping one of the Ableton team will post on this thread and explain why this is.

The silence is deafening.

murphf wrote:

WaveRider wrote:

popslut wrote: Yes, but how are you supposed to hear what you are playing if monitoring [on your midi track] is set to "off"?

well that is possible(and common) if I play a midi synth with local set to ON. (that means when the synth keys trigger the synth engine directly, meaning you do not have to loop midi thru live)

I was wondering what would be the use of the 'off' setting, but this must be it.

However, if you, like me, only have rack synths and use a midi controller, it wont work. The problem is that, unlike soundcards, most midi interfaces don't have a 'direct monitoring' option.

I'm using two external synth modules: Nanosynth and JV1010.
I always use Monitor set to Auto. My midi files are identical because I use to quantize during recording. I have tested without quantize and I can confirm what happens so +1.
If I were the Abes I would fix this by adding an option to switch off or on the ability to pass MIDI to external synths without delays. BTW this might even happen automatically, when using an external MIDI interface in routing instead of a softsynth.

- Best
- Pasha

Ive been stuck with this problem for a while. I have read through the 7 pages of posts trying to find a solution to my problem. I am using ableton and external synths in a live environment. I have live 6.0.1. I sent a midi pattern to the external synth and recorded it back in ableton. I then adjusted the midi delay to be the delay of the recording (about -18ms). So now it is recieving audio in time only if the audio track monitor is *off*.

So how can I play this live without recording the audio and then playing it back? I have to be able to have the monitor set to in or auto so that I can side chain and add effects etc.. Up until now I have been working out the delay/bpm and moving the midi pattern forward .

Am I missing something?

popslut wrote:

murphf wrote:The problem is that, unlike soundcards, most midi interfaces don't have a 'direct monitoring' option.

The reason manufacturers don't deem it necessary to equip their interfaces with a 'direct monitoring' option is that with every sequencer except Ableton Live you don't need it.

Ableton Live is the only sequencer which significantly delays your midi data as it passes through.

I'm still hoping one of the Ableton team will post on this thread and explain why this is.

The silence is deafening.

In response to this point, here's one of the replies I had from Ableton tech support:

when the Monitoring is set to "In", you will always have a certain latency depending on your hardware and plug-in used, because you are playing in real-time and Live cannot compensate because it does not know what you will be playing next. As soon as the clip is recorded, Live knows which notes to play next and compensates for any delays.

iain.morland wrote:here's one of the replies I had from Ableton tech support:

when the Monitoring is set to "In", you will always have a certain latency depending on your hardware and plug-in used, because you are playing in real-time and Live cannot compensate because it does not know what you will be playing next. As soon as the clip is recorded, Live knows which notes to play next and compensates for any delays.

That only applies when using virtual instruments. As we all know, the latency is a result of the time taken to compute the sound from the synth.

With external synths, the computer doesn't have to compute the sound - it simply has to pass on the midi data and record it to a sequence, yet, with Ableton Live, the midi data is delayed exactly as if you were triggering a soft synth.

Good point, I have written back to tech support and asked them to read your post.

Is there any update on this subject?

Could we get a response from one of the groovy ppl at Ableton?

Thanks

Citrik

Incidentally, there's a great explanation of the whole issue, and how to work with/around it, in the latest Sound On Sound (Feb 07) - it's actually much clearer than anything the Abes have publicly said on the subject!

Hi,

We are working on it activelly, studying the technical part of it and we hope being able to communicate about some results and/or improvement, but I simply can't tell when that will happen.

What does the Sound on Sound article say? I'm curious

Regards,
Amaury

Hi,

It's too long to usefully summarise, I'm afraid, but it basically suggests that entering a negative value in the track delay field is the solution when playing back MIDI tracks on external synths.

It's pp. 184-186 of the Feb issue. I imagine that if you asked SOS nicely they might send you a copy!

Thanks for the reply Amaury!

Feel free to let me know if you need any more details or testing, etc.

Thanks for the effort!

Citrik

Awaiting with interest...

Amaury wrote:Hi,

We are working on it activelly, studying the technical part of it and we hope being able to communicate about some results and/or improvement, but I simply can't tell when that will happen.

What does the Sound on Sound article say? I'm curious

Regards,
Amaury

Whiile your studying do yourselves a favour and slap a copy of other daws in your pcs and play some midi using a keyboard in real time with or without quantise on. dont just play a one not deal, play something with a bit of feel or even just a normal type synth line. did you notice other daws manage this with no problem. amazing isnt it

im a good boy now this was beng nice.