Q about monitoring with plugins and latency - please help!

[monsoonmoon]

Hi there.

I recently had to take the plunge into using more hardware in my setup due to an ongoing shoulder RSI problem.. basically I can't use the mouse for long periods.

So I had the idea to just use my computer (ableton) as an effects rack, using an MPC1000 to sequence everything (and play back audio tracks - I have JJ OS 1). I don't press play in ableton - I just let the audio run through it). I tweak fx with my mouse but its minimal compared to doing everything with the computer.

I have an A&H ZED R16 with a TR909 and MPC1000 amongst other things. Each instrument is running into the ZED and then through ableton. There is a certain amount of latency (relatively small) but all channels have this so everything is in sync.

However, I want to pick one of the ableton channels (e.g. the 909 with various fx (ie WET)) and send that to the MPC1000 and record as an audio track.

BUT.. because I'm monitoring everything through Ableton, when I send the 909 wet channel for example to the MPC, its lagging behind. I understand why but I'm trying to figure out how I can some how get around this. I've messed around for hours with the track delays in ableton but i just can't get it to work. I"ve set up a recording track in ableton which is just a track with the desired channel (e.g. the wet 909) sent to it. Choosing a negative track delay on this record channel doesn't seem to work. Positive delays are audible when test this recording but I don't quite understand why the negative value doesn't work. Obviously I don't know enough about latency and monitoring with plugins.

Any ideas? This is driving me crazy! I can't progress with any work unless I can figure this out!

Thanks.

[mikemc]

have you tried setting track delay on everything else to sync up with the track you're sending?

[fishmonkey]

i'm a bit confused by your post... are you actually "direct monitoring" any of the tracks, or is everything going through into ZED, through Live, and then back out the ZED to the MPC?

btw, "direct monitoring" usually refers to monitoring directly from your hardware or mixer, and not through your software.

[medwaystudios]

Sounds like you're trying to use negative delay to remove latency which is inherently impossible. The reason you can do positive delays is because adding more latency on top of what you have is easy for software to do as it's just worsening the problem. If you could fix it with negative delay then the idea of latency wouldn't exist in the first place.

Latency is the minimum time a processor needs to calculate and then produce audio. Since it's a 'minimum' it means bringing back a delay on a channel won't affect it. It's the smallest time delay already possible given the resources of the hardware/software.

It would work if it was a programmed/recording audio piece in Ableton though as now it can pre calculate the delay. When something is live then the software would have to literally be able to go back into time to see what you were going to feed it so it could delay it ahead of time in the future which is of course physically impossible.

What you could try is recording it as audio first in Ableton, and then delaying that back.

[monsoonmoon]

sorry 'direct monitoring' was the wrong term...

deep down i realise that using negative track delay won't work, its just that i can use negative track delay when playing back the tracks and i was praying that somehow it would work when sending the audio out and recording it.

e.g. with the mpc into tracks 3/4 of the zed and the 909 into track 5, both routed to their own channels in ableton, i can hear the audio shifting when i use negative delay. e.g. if i put negative delay onto the mpc channel then it speeds up in relation to the 909. but routing the 909 to a seperate channel, setting negative delay, and then sending that to the zed and then out to the mpc record ins won't shift the audio back when recording it.. am i going insane and missing something obvious?