Ableton Forum

i am playing live midi drums to an acapella that i have loaded into live. the acapella is lagging behind the click track by about 15ms. i've warped it and am pretty sure i've got it locked to where it should be, but it's still playing behind the click track. i've resampled it and the wav file is clearly playing behind the click track visually as well. there are no vsts on the acapella track that would be causing it to play late.

what i would like to do is use the track delay feature to bump the acapella forward a few milliseconds. when i change the number in track delay, i can't hear any difference - even up around 500ms. it is also grayed out which makes me suspect that it is not having any effect on the track.

is the problem that i am playing live and the track delay feature only works when exporting? in that case, it's useless to me because my set is played live.

any help would be really appreciated!

ps i am running a macbook with osx 10.5.8, the latest version of live 8, and an external tascam mixer - fw-1884. never had this problem before despite having made many other tracks that follow the same formula.

pps first post. hello internet.

A few thoughts here.

If you're resampling audio from a track and the resampled result is delayed, then that implies that there is a plugin in the signal path that is delaying the audio output. If you're playing live, then that plugin is going to be a pain and you should eliminate it (perhaps by freezing the result - unless its something like a mastering plugin on the output bus)

Track delay only works with delay compensation turned on. You'll find that in the options menu. Turn it on but *remove the delay settings* and play back the original acapalla (not your resampled one). It won't actually revert the delay; it will just delay all the other tracks to match it. That will make your live drums play a fraction of a second behind when you play (which really isn't workable), but it will make *recorded* drums play in time with the acapella (try it and you'll see). I strongly suspect you really want it turned off.

Track delay has only a few useful purposes: fixing things when a plugin inaccurately reports its delay, fixing things with external instruments and MIDI timing, and occasionally, groove. You shouldn't be using it to pull two Ableton sound sources into time.

In short - eliminate the source of the delay. Anything else will cause more problems than it solves.

thanks Sly One. good to know how track delay works. not gonna help with the rig im running.

looked into it and it turns out i made a rookie mistake, missed a plug-in on the master buss that was causing the delay.