Ableton Forum

Hello all!

So I recently got a Circuit Happy MI:2, which is a Ableton Link enabled eurorack module perfect for syncing/clocking my modular setup to Ableton. It works VERY well.

I was just curious though. When I initially set up my live set, I usually have an offset on this link device of -30 ms. It lines up smack dab on the beat.

Once I start building other channels though, Live starts to introduce more compensation.

So I was wondering first if there was a place to get a straight ahead number to make it less fumbling around to get my modular synced properly.

If I understand it correctly, Live delay compensates to the device with the most latency. Or is it the entire collective latency of an individual track and plugins?

For example, typically when I build my vocal channel is when I see the real uptick in latency compensation. I use a gate which can introduce 70ms of latency and an M4L Autotuna which introduces about 50ms of latency. So is lives total compensation the 70ms for the gate, or the total of 120ms for all devices on this track?

Or is it just not this cut and dry? It would be a great thing to just see a straight number provided by Live, but I have searched the manual and can't seem to find anything except individual device latency monitoring.

Thanks in advance!

Live's latency handling is a bit complex.

If input monitoring is on or auto, it won't technically compensate for latency because performer will be recording/monitoring to track with latency which it has no control over. The user will subconsciously compensate for latency. For small latencies this isn't an issue usually.

With this type of setup, I would keep buffer size low (to where roundtrip is less than 10ms 64 on my system). 128 works fine for midi softsynths though since only output latency is only monitored in that scenario.

With input monitoring off, Ableton should compensate and offset to correct latency, you might need to set up recording delay offset to get it right on but they have a built in lesson to walk you through this.


All of these scenarios should produce minimal issues. The biggest issues is when you start adding plugins that aren't zero latency to the chain. Some high quality compressors might add a millisecond or two which usually isn't a big deal, but it becomes more apparent when you stack many of these or introduce a plugin that's well over 2ms usually a mastering type plugin. Disabling these plugins won't get rid of latency, they must be removed or bounced/flattened.

Yes live will go off of longest latency wherever in DAW.

That said Live has a feature to enable Reduced latency when monitoring, where Ableton will only produce latency through input chain, so if your input chain has zero latency, your latency will only be roundtrip, which should help get rid of any big monitored latencies.


That said when tracking, it is usually best to not use any mastering plugins or any other high latency plugins (unless they have a low latency mode).

If you click on each device, it will show latency produced. Most plugins don't produce any latency or minimal amounts but a small amount of plugins can cause nightmares. Anything that needs lookahead processing will add latency. Many oversampled plugins also will add latency as well (usually not as bad as lookahead).

Generally though I try to keep latency producing plugins under 2ms at low buffer settings. When this is done most people won't even notice the latency but as the numbers creep higher than this, performers will start noticing and it will make it difficult to perform.

A 50ms roundtrip latency is noticable to almost everybody. A 12 ms latency is noticable by only a small amount of people.

Hi @jonbender I am interested in the Circuit Happy ML:2 but other than your comment above I can't find any actual reviews of the product. The available videos are quite thin on "how well does it work"? I'm also wondering how well the Wi-Fi is going to work when the device is going into a grounded metal enclosure? Let me know if this is still working great for you.

My goal is to be able to track up to 6 analog signals at one time from the Eurorack into my Behringer mixer while maintaining sync so I can edit things on measure boundaries. A couple things I did this weekend, I just recorded them without any sync at all and didn't do any cutting/trimming either as it's too hard to get that right on 6 different tracks.

Thanks,

DL

I just wanted to follow up and say the Circuit Happy ML:2 works GREAT.

I used it on these tunes to sync the modular stuff into my Ableton track.

https://soundcloud.com/gary-worsham/bui ... boil-water
https://soundcloud.com/gary-worsham/sur ... -pygmalion

DL