Ableton Forum

I'm hitting a brick wall realizing how big and unpredictable API calls via M4L are.
Can we hope (massive) improvements in the future ?
Meanwhile, is this latency documented somewhere ?
Thanks.

Could it be related to some specific objects you use to move the data? Like (udp)send/receive?
Events in Max are limited to one buffer size, can you use signals instead?
What kind of API calls are you doing in instance?

I made a simple test :
a device that listens for a midi note. If it receives a note, it just fires a clip (no launch quant) that contains one note at the very beginning.
Then I placed a few notes in the triggering clip, recorded the result of the "called" clip in a third track and compared the two clips.
So, in my experience, firing a clip has a random latency, from like 5ms to 100ms.

I see. Unfortunately it's not possible to get sample accurate here.
I myself spent a lot of time and questions around, years ago, to do something like what you're describing and the hard reality is that it's not possible to do this accurately... and as you've noticed, you don't just get inaccuracy but randomness too!
I convinced myself that this should be seen and accepted just like "the beauty of analog imperfection" right there in our digital world

Another report to support@ableton.com wouldn't hurt, though
If it can't be sample accurate, at least the latency should be fixed and predictable.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Fri May 21, 2021 3:07 pm

I convinced myself that this should be seen and accepted just like "the beauty of analog imperfection" right there in our digital world

Except that clocking in the analog domain is the tightest thing in the world.

You're right!
That doesn't solve our problem, though...