Ableton Forum

So, i'm a relatively new live user, i purchased it in december 08 and only lately i started using it for song composition.
Now I have this project with many plugins,external instruments, busses and sends, and i came across a REALLY annoing problem wich i am pretty sure is due to the automatic plugin delay compensation.
I did many searches about this topic and came up with different results, many people complaining that pdc doesnt work correctly with some plugins(especially with sends for parallel compression etc), well..i havent encountered this problem (yet..) but there's one major thing that is bugging me:

the song position marker not synced with the audio.

and not just a couple of ms, its more than one bar at 173 bpms, actually is like one bar and half, and that makes it pratically impossible for me to arrange. I need to have a visual correlation of what i am hearing or else i would never know where or when ther's something to fix, add..whatever
And on top of that, (besides the gui acting a bit sluggish as reported on the manual) every action i do comes with lots of delay.
Like im working on a looped midi clip, and say i want to throw in a note at wichever position, i can only hear the note only after a couple of loop cycles..same thing with the plugins, mixer,etc
if for example i turn a fader up or down i can hear the changes many many seconds later.
Now i got to the point where i simply cant go further with this project, unless i bounce everyhting down to audio (wich is very complictaed at this point since i have many compressor triggerd by external sidechains in the middle of the chain..and if disable the compressor, frezze/flatten and move the compressor at the end of the chain i simply wont get the same effect). and also all the money i spent on my quadcore to run more plugins are basically wasted money..if using many plugins leads to this situation i'should have gone on with my "old" p4 single core

Basically i spent all the weekend trying to ,understand first, and then fix (with no apparent results) this problem instead of doing what i really would like to do in my spare time: and that would be making music.

Now, i still havent reported the problem to abletonsupport since i'm at work and dont remember all my computer specs (last night i was so frustrated i turned the pc off and couldn be bothered to even write an email), but i'd really appreciate any suggestions , and possibly work-arounds for this kind of problem, wich i believe i am not the only one to have.
now, hope you dont get me wrong, i really really love live and its "creative" work-flow and i would never want to think about changin daw (again), but if this wont be fixed for version 8 i probably wont even upgrade and i'll probaly consider selling my license..and really realy hope it wont happen.

apologies for the rant thread but im very frustrated with this problem and i have this tune (wich could have some remote chance to be signed) wich i am finding very difficult to finish due to this technical problem..and its one of those period that im in a inspired mood but things like this are killing all my creativity

Hi hdrpbx,

first of all: what soundcard do you have?
In case you should be working on a PC using an onboard soundcard, avoid the MME/Direct X driver as it introduces way too much latency, download and install the free ASIO4ALL driver in this case: www.asio4all.com

Second: optimize your buffer size settings as described in the integrated "Setting up audio I-O" lesson.

You might also try to set different Plug-in buffer sizes (in Live´s CPU preferences), you might get better results with smaller buffer than the default setting, which is "As Audio buffer".

If these (very basic suggestions) don´t help, please don´t hesitate to contact [email protected]

Best,
Jörg

thanks for the reply

i have an EMU-1820 M with the latest drivers, next days i'm gonna borrow a motu ultralite from a friend to see how it behaves

i still havent read the optimize buffer tutorial but i actually allready tried different buffer settings. from the smallest to 1024 i think and it didnt change anything, at least that GUI problem i was referring to was still there
the only way to see the time position synced with the audio was disabling PDC, wich is obviosuly not a solution,and the idea of manaully entering delay settings for each track is quite thrilling
and i am not sure, i really hope to be wrong but from what i remeber there were some strange things happening even with automations,they happend to come in with some delay aswell
as i said i'm not completely sure cause yesterday i was a bit upset and turned off everything but one of these days i will open back the project and report everything in detalis to the support team

anyway, i think it would be really cool to have an option to give more priority to the GUI at the expense of some cpu, cause this is almost a paradoxal situation where you have lots of power (that somehow leads you to use many plugins..probably even more than what is necessary but when you have this option is hard to say no) that takes quite easily to mess things up , and in my case, to a point of non return where it becomes allmost impossible to follow an arrangiament in all his details,
i mean if i hear something out of place at a certain point i need to know exactly where in the timeline is located
and i guess this becomes even more relevant when you produce music at fast bpm, like 173 in my case

well..sorry for the long post and the nonsense english ..lol, i just really hope to find an acceptable solution to this problem

so, i think i have (partially) solved the problem
basically i had lots of bypassed plugins on several unused tracks, i deleted all these tracks, saved the project to a new version, rebooted live,loaded the new project and the GUI started acting allmost normally, the song position line still is not completerl in sync with the audio but the lag is quite acceptable

so, am i right in thinking that ableton somehow still compensates the delay even for bypassed plugins ? can anyone confirm this ?