Recording (bouncing) midi hw to audio (delay?)

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DuggletonLive
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:57 am

Recording (bouncing) midi hw to audio (delay?)

Post by DuggletonLive » Fri Oct 28, 2022 3:42 am

I'm getting a 20 to 30ms delay on audio recorded from a midi track playing a hardware synth.
For workflow reasons I would like the audio track to be recorded in sync and not to have to mess with changing and restoring the "track delay" track setting or have to manually shift the audio track every take.
I've tried "track delay" + and -ve values on the source midi track and can make it worse but not better than 20ms.
I've tried this on the audio recording track and the same thing: the "track delay" on record can make it worse but not better than~20ms.

There must be well established efficient workflows for achieving tightly synched hw midi recordings.
I know latency is inevitable, but I assume there are ways of compensating for it in this situation that are not repetitiously tedious?

Thanks for reading, appreciate any hints or links to info...


DuggletonLive
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Recording (bouncing) midi hw to audio (delay?)

Post by DuggletonLive » Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:16 am

Thanks very much for the link.

I think I have found a workflow I can live with!

1.Put an External Instrument device on the midi track. (This makes the track an audio output not midi, which is not always ideal, but workable, for example can duplicate the track before adding External Instrument, etc.).
2. Set the Hardware Latency value in External Instrument to the delay you observe in the recording made after the next steps:
3. Freeze the track
4. Bounce (e.g to Resample track) or Flatten the Frozen track

The end result (after establishing the Hardware Latency) is consistent 0 delay audio clips!
If the sample block size is changed the Hardware Latency value will need to be adjusted.

DuggletonLive
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Recording (bouncing) midi hw to audio (delay?)

Post by DuggletonLive » Tue Nov 01, 2022 2:01 am

Freezing and flattening has limitations (including being tedious).
There is an additional way, by recording to an audio track with monitoring set to OFF. Have a duplicate track to monitor the sound.
Here's a comprehensive overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5o2BIs ... RickyTinez

DuggletonLive
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:57 am

Re: Recording (bouncing) midi hw to audio (delay?)

Post by DuggletonLive » Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:46 am

When recording to a track with monitoring OFF there will be a constant small delay in the recording. This delay does not vary with sample block size, so is probably due to latency in the midi out plus latency of synth.

This delay (in ms) can be entered as negative value in the Track Delay setting of the midi source track to completely remove any delay in the recording!

The catch with Track Delay is that it will add latency for any midi keyboard live played instrument across the whole session (while the negative value is set).

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