Live 8 midi timing issue

[ryanDigital]

In 8.03 (and every other previous version 8 release) I am getting some really bizarre, erratic and downright crippling behavior when using external midi instuments. Basically, the midi timing is completely off, the likes of which I have never seen. It seems Live is actually playing the midi notes ahead of the audio by around 50-100 ms (!). I can compensate for this with ridiculous track delays on the midi channels (although I really shouldn't have to). This delay time seems to be in constant motion, though, and when pressing play, I must press it several times to "lock" them together. This is a completely hit or miss thing too, so as you can imagine, it's not really usable. Don't even think about trying to sync up an LFO or an arp pattern. To top it off, Live crashes at the drop of a hat any time it receives CC input from one of my synths.

Heres my setup-

macbook 2.0 running 10.5.7
korg zero 8 as FW audio interface
esi m4u on the midi
jupiter 6, dsi evolver, moog phatty and virus ti all midi'd up with audio running into the zero

Ok before we go pointing fingers at the known-to-be-problematic korg zero 8, let me just say that this setup nuns fine in Live 7 and in Logic 8. In fact, it has been the most solid and inspirational setup I've had yet and the zero has performed reasonably well as an audio interface. I do realize that, most likely, it is the combo of harware/ software that is causing the problem, however, this has rendered my investment in live 8 pretty much pointless. Don't even get me started on the APC 40 that will be here in a week which will be pretty much unusable as well.

Other tests I've run include switching out the midi interface for a motu usb midi interface, same result. I also ran the built in audio and was able to achieve nominal midi timing, but that is to be expected. I am reasonably sure that the korg is playing into this somehow, because when I switch the clock source back and forth between "mac" and "device" under Audio MIDI setup, it changes that weird delay time pretty significantly. The best I can do right now is switch quickly from device to mac and back again and it will work for the very first time i hit play when i go back to live. As soon as I hit stop, then play again, timing is off by a random ms value. Again, it is playing the midi ahead of the audio!

I'm actually really surprised that I'm the only one experiencing these issues. This is absolutely a make or break issue for me. 8 is 100% out of the question right now for anything but testing. Explanation has been sent to Ableton support. Certainly any ideas, suggestions or confirmations of this or something similar are welcome.

[jlgrimes]

I'm having similar issues with Live 8.

My Se 1x is playing really off now. In Live 7 it only had a slight amount of latency. My other synths played fine in Live 7. Now my main outboard synths (Motif Rack, XV 5080, Korg Triton) are about as off as my Se 1x was in 7 but the bad part is this makes it difficult when trying to play a performance with the quantize off and not get back what you played in.

I'm on a pc though (Windows XP), with an Echo 3g, motu midi express xt, and korg kontrol 49. My kontrol 49 feels a little late sometimes as well even at 128 buffer setting.

[aubford]

Same here. I find it impossible to get my virus TI to render on time with any of my songs. Im pretty sure its at least 50% Abletons fault...

[cjohs]

Try switching to ASIO (at least I know this cuts latency on the windows platform - I don't know about Mac)

[quartertone]

I have had MIDI jitter, sometimes seconds-long, when I tried to send MIDI Out from Live into another PC (both systems are WinXP 32bit). So I believe this is strictly an issue with Live.

My solution: An old copy of Sonar on the MIDI-receive pc. Perfect!