Ableton Forum

so i got this live software free with a mobilepre, and i want to record different tracks on my laptop, e.g. do a track with guitar, then go back and do a vocal track that matches up with the guitar track i just recorded etc. so i get the guitar track down fine, but when i go back and sing along to it, and then play back the second track, it is totally out of sync with the first! i think i understand the latency issue, but what is the practical solution to this? is it possible with this software? i guess what i want is a sort of direct monitor for a track that is already recorded...
thanks much
rich

rich, you need to investigate the "overall latency" compensation feature of live. There's a whole section in the manual on it.

it's a bit of phaffing around but you only have to do it once with a given machine. the crux of it is that you connect an output of the MobilePre to an input with a lead (I just used my guitar lead) and use one track to record a snare hit or some other percussive sample to another track, and you measure the time delay by zooming on the recorded sample and sticking the resulting number of milliseconds into the Audio Preferences section for latency.

then hey presto, synchronised guitar and vox.

read the section in the manual, then read it again. It took me a couple of goes to get the gist of it.

matt

the "overall latency" thing is just for sync of two machines running live.

as for the latency you get introduced on recording, there is nothing to automatically adjust it.

either turn on warp and move the first warpmarker to where the recorded clips bar starts or turn your latency down to something more managable like 64 or 128 samples.

sweetjesus, that's not the experience I had, and it's certainly not what the manual describes as the purpose of the overall latency adjustment.

"The Overall Latency setting is only relevant when recording audio with monitoring set to “Off” (seeMonitoring). This would be the case if you were, for example, recording an acoustic instrument and “monitoring” through the air."

This would also be the case if your PC was too slow to allow you to use Live's monitoring, and you chose to use the MobilePre's hardware monitoring to monitor your vox through cans while singing to a recorded track. Hence, you need to make the Overall Latency adjustment.

I had exactly the symptoms described by mustawa and checking and fixing the overall latency setting worked perfectly for me.

MP

Hangon.... Can the abes please clarify this....

We've been over it 100 times and each time it comes down to.....

1 + 1 + 1 = 3.... not 0

I've always thought it was for syncing with other/slower computers.

-Ben

mjpetersen68 wrote:sweetjesus, that's not the experience I had, and it's certainly not what the manual describes as the purpose of the overall latency adjustment.

"The Overall Latency setting is only relevant when recording audio with monitoring set to “Off” (seeMonitoring). This would be the case if you were, for example, recording an acoustic instrument and “monitoring” through the air."

This would also be the case if your PC was too slow to allow you to use Live's monitoring, and you chose to use the MobilePre's hardware monitoring to monitor your vox through cans while singing to a recorded track. Hence, you need to make the Overall Latency adjustment.

I had exactly the symptoms described by mustawa and checking and fixing the overall latency setting worked perfectly for me.

MP

This has been the subject of much discussion. Personally I never found that my recordings were ever adjusted and when I cried, people on the forum told me that indeed overall latency doesnt do squat for recordings.

I played with the settings a fair bit and my recorded audio was never shifted to the correct place so I can only assume it doesnt work as one would believe.

Being a fairly new Live user, I don't know the history of this feature, but the manual is pretty clear in terms of the need for it. By entering a number in this box you are just telling Live! of the EXTRA latency in your system for which it NEEDS to compensate when placing samples in time.

The object is not to see the Overall Latency as being 0, but simply the number that you calculate as being needed for Live! to time shift samples in the display to cause two samples to be in Sync. So, if your vox recordings are constantly 10ms late compares to the guitar that you're singing over, then sticking 10ms in the Overall Latency box just says to live "OK, when I put this recording on the track, I need to pull it FORWARD by 10ms in time". So, when the files are played back, they are in sync.

In other words, changing this number does NOT actually change the latency in your system, it just changes WHERE on the timeline Live places samples, in much the same way as Sweetjesus suggests moving the sample manually. All live is doing is moving the sample automatically each time it's recorded by the same consistent amount that was calcualted as per the manual.

The manual makes no mention of syncing two computers running live so I'm guessing this comes from earlier versions? So perhaps the actual operation of the feature has changed. perhaps Ableton will clarify that.

matt

sweet, in response to yours, I've seen those same posts. again, my own experience doesn't match that, on my system at least the correction works as intended.

the major caveat to Latency correction seems to be that it ONLY works when monitoring in Live is turned OFF (NOT auto or on), but I'm sure you've tried that already.

it could just be that it works for me and doesn't work for you, but since rich is using the same interface as me, I thought it worth a shot.

mp

mjpetersen68 wrote:sweet, in response to yours, I've seen those same posts. again, my own experience doesn't match that, on my system at least the correction works as intended.

the major caveat to Latency correction seems to be that it ONLY works when monitoring in Live is turned OFF (NOT auto or on), but I'm sure you've tried that already.

it could just be that it works for me and doesn't work for you, but since rich is using the same interface as me, I thought it worth a shot.

mp

No I haven't tried that! ... thanks for that, if it works you rock.

If you can't get the whole Monitor Auto/On/Off latency adjustment biz figured out, a relatively easy fix is to use a plug-in to delay the track that seems to be ahead. (This would be the track that you first recorded.)
Go to voxengo.com and download their Latency Sample delay (free). Then plug-in the amount of samples that are buffered on your MobilePre.
You'll see typical presets like 256, 512, etc. Usually one of those.
What gets more complicated is when you are recording a second track and have plug-ins on your first track that have some delay (e.g some compressors, analyzers, reverbs). Then you may have to do some experimenting to get them in synch by dialing the sample delay. Live does not have a built-in latency compensation for plug-ins.