Ableton Forum

Thank you to everyone who's answered previous questions about the infamous latency. I'm looking at the tutorial on delay compensation but since I'm new to this I need to know what do I need to plug or click in the audio settings to be able to actually even do the exercise in the tutorial to figure out what I need to adjust. That's how basic I am with this.

I'm using 8.2.5 and I'm kind of a n00b when it comes to inputs and outputs and hardware too. I want to be able to record vocals without latency and right now I'm just playing with the buffer size to get close. Obviously I'm not getting it exact either which is why I want to do the exercise.

In the Delay Compensation tutorial, it says "connect an audio cable from Live's input 1/2 to Live's output 1/2. It doesn't matter of this is an analog or digital connection; it is important, however, that you make a real hardware connection". What does that actually mean? I'm running a Saffire 6 into the USB port. What is the Live output? Is it different from Speakers?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

it doesn't matter if it's analog or digital, as long as the signal can go out and come back in.

the Live output can be ANY output from your sound card, same with the input.


take a step back and consider what they're asking you to do.

you're going to play a sound out of Live then send it back into Live and record it. then you're going to look at the waveforms side by side, zooming in closely on where they start and see how far apart they are. you can tell how far apart they are because there's a timeline at the bottom of Arrange view. whatever that value is, that's the value you enter into the delay, with a negative number.

you want to be careful about not creating a feedback loop, set the monitor settings accordingly (I'd want to try it before telling you wrong info.)

I had to do this over and over a few times to get it super close. it's pretty cool to see the different recordings get closer and closer, you're tuning your DAW.

recording becomes MUCH easier with this enabled. for years I was lazy and just adjusted by hand. with this setup sessions become much smoother, even more fun.



FWIW there's another latency that's even more notorious, but that's a different story. (Live doesn't compensate for the latency through plug ins, so if you draw in automation at the start of a project then add effects to that device chain later your automation will be mis-timed. don't let this trip you out, just know it's there if things get weird for you.)

hth

Thanks Tone Deft.

How do I set my inputs and outputs so that the signal can go out and come back? When set my input as "Stereo Mix" (I assume that's the comp's sound card) and output as "Stereo Mix", nothing records on the second track when I run the exercise.

I enabled record on the second track and the master record but still I can't get it to record the test sound. I get a wave but it's just flat.

alrighty, just tried it.

this is my sound card


I took a guitar cable, plugged one end into the headphone out. the other end plugged into input #2 on the front.

I put a kick drum sample into track 1, set it's monitor to Auto.

I trimmed the start of the kick drum sample so it's a nice clean rising edge waveform.

I set track 2 to OFF and enabled record on it. its input is Ext In and input 2. (the input # Live refers to doesn't have to be the same number printed on your sound card. hit the drop down box to see the meters for the inputs, play the sample and see which meter goes active.)

at the top of the screen I hit record on the transport then hit play.

I had to turn up the volume on the sound card to get a stronger signal.

the recorded signal was delayed by 2ms. so I entered -2 in the delay compensation box.

one thing I forgot, for delay compensation to work the recording track's monitor has to be set to OFF and the delay compensation option has to be ticked in the Options menu.


FWIW to do this quickly you can just hit STOP, tap PLAY twice to reset the transport, then hit RECORD-PLAY-STOP to do the recording. then ctrl-comma to open the preferences. then try again.

I also didn't put my kick drum sample at the very start of time, I set it in 100ms so I can definitely see the start of the recording.


hth it's not as hard as I'm making it out to be. I'm writing quick because I should be playing with some new toys.

Dude thanks so much that worked perfectly.

cheers guys, I favorite this right now.

The ubber tip for setting up an audio interface.
Thank you