Latency differs between midi channels and external insts

[Fullofkittens]

Hello all,

Vexing problem regarding the External Instrument plugin. First of all, I'm loving the idea of it and it is ALMOST the most fantastic thingamajig ever.

However, it seems to behave differently than the midi tracks regarding latency.

I've done a little experimenting around and if I set the "Track delays" for my midiman 8x8 driving my s5000 to "-7.5 ms", I get perfect timing. Great, fantastic. I love that those sliders exist and they make my day.

However, if I take the exact same midi clip, and put it in an external instrument with the same midi bus and channel, the clicks that came in perfect time now come in 20 ms early. BUH? Early? If I want to get an external instrument in time, I have to set the track delay to "20 ms". The "latency" slider on the external instrument itself works opposite of the track delays and cannot go below zero, so I've been leaving that alone.
^^^ this here refers to recording into a regular audio recording channel though my mixer; the External Instrument doesn't have an input specified.

Now, SCENARIO 3: I have External Instrument on a midi track with an audio input specified. I used the almost-incredibly-handy "freeze/flatten" feature and record/flatten the sound onto the same midi track. (Keep in mind that I just got perfect timing on this track by sliding the Track Delay to 20ms; it's still set at 20ms). The flattened track is 7 ms late. What the hell? The midi track recording its output is 7ms slower than an audio track recording the exact same signal? So I have to change the track delay depending on whether I bounce to track 1 (audio recording) or track 2 (midi playback)?

Now ordinarily, I mean, come on, what's 7ms between friends? But because of the fact that Live starts and stops recording rigidly on beats and then loops accordingly, this is creating a situation where tracks recorded through External Instrument have loops that are out of time with the rest of the session (because if I move the start point to the beginning of the beat then it cuts off the end of the last beat).

Any ideas?

P.S. I posted this problem a couple of years ago, no responses. The problem seems to be a lot worse in 8.1.5, external instrument is all over the place, timing-wise. I'll see whether 8.2 improves matters in... about 15 hours. =)