New Laptop, still too much latency

[SimonWilliamsGB]

Hi Folks, I'm struggling with latency when I play a MIDI keyboard into an Ableton instrument (e.g. Piano).

I've just bought a new Dell XPS laptop with an Intel Core i7 13th Generation processor, 14 threads.
I hoped it would finally allow me to play instruments using my Roland MIDI Keyboard controller through Ableton.
Unfortunately, even after following the online advice there is still noticeable latency. It's the first thing I tried on the laptop before I installed all the usual junk, so a little disappointing!

I have a Roland A33 MIDI Keyboard Controller and a Roland M-GS64 Sound Expansion which I can use together to play music. I connected the keyboard to my laptop using a new EBXYA Midi to USB-C connection (from Amazon).

Having installed Ableton Live 10, I followed the advice on https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ce-latency to reduce latency as much as possible. I've also tried to use a Line 6 Sonic Port VX as the AXIO audio output (I have it for my electric guitars).

However, comparing, by playing output from both the hardware sound module (M-GS64) and through the Sonic Port VX together, results in an obvious double note ("ba-dum") and I find it difficult to play tunes through Ableton instruments due to the delay.

Can anyone suggest a way to improve this or is it just a fact of life that there will always be a minimum amount latency in this setup?

Is there a hardware sound interface I might use to reduce latency to acceptable levels (a bonus if it supports both 2x2 MIDI channels for my A33 and M-GS64 as well as dual audio inputs for Guitar and Sound Module inputs).

If I can fix this, it's worth me upgrading to the latest Ableton version and I'd like to subscribe to Roland Cloud. Otherwise, I'll have to save up for a new hardware keyboard workstation (Fantom or MODX+, perhaps).

Thanks in advance for your help.

[yur2die4]

There seem to be a few variables on this so it is tricky to evaluate.

Also haven’t seen much mention of using ASIO drivers either for the interface or directly through the laptop audio output.

Things that affect latency are, driver type, buffer settings for driver, input/output Could have an impact, if you have audio going in and are also comparing it to something not being processed, and a big one people sometimes overlook is Plugins.. plugins in your set can cause latency if you’re not aware of them having that impact.

Usually to troubleshoot, I’ll try to start by keeping the setup as simple and obvious as possible. Empty set, deliberately using a specific instrument sound, checking my audio driver settings.

[jlgrimes]

Hi Folks, I'm struggling with latency when I play a MIDI keyboard into an Ableton instrument (e.g. Piano).

I've just bought a new Dell XPS laptop with an Intel Core i7 13th Generation processor, 14 threads.
I hoped it would finally allow me to play instruments using my Roland MIDI Keyboard controller through Ableton.
Unfortunately, even after following the online advice there is still noticeable latency. It's the first thing I tried on the laptop before I installed all the usual junk, so a little disappointing!

I have a Roland A33 MIDI Keyboard Controller and a Roland M-GS64 Sound Expansion which I can use together to play music. I connected the keyboard to my laptop using a new EBXYA Midi to USB-C connection (from Amazon).

Having installed Ableton Live 10, I followed the advice on https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ce-latency to reduce latency as much as possible. I've also tried to use a Line 6 Sonic Port VX as the AXIO audio output (I have it for my electric guitars).

However, comparing, by playing output from both the hardware sound module (M-GS64) and through the Sonic Port VX together, results in an obvious double note ("ba-dum") and I find it difficult to play tunes through Ableton instruments due to the delay.

Can anyone suggest a way to improve this or is it just a fact of life that there will always be a minimum amount latency in this setup?

Is there a hardware sound interface I might use to reduce latency to acceptable levels (a bonus if it supports both 2x2 MIDI channels for my A33 and M-GS64 as well as dual audio inputs for Guitar and Sound Module inputs).

If I can fix this, it's worth me upgrading to the latest Ableton version and I'd like to subscribe to Roland Cloud. Otherwise, I'll have to save up for a new hardware keyboard workstation (Fantom or MODX+, perhaps).

Thanks in advance for your help.

What numbers you are trying to achieve in ms? IMO a round-trip under 10ms is pretty respectable. Under 15ms, workable. Anything worse than that though is could be an issue. Also for softsynths playback, it is the output latency to really worry about, so while the numbers I stated might be high, the output latency is usually much lower.

First place to look is drivers and audio interface.

On windows you definitely need ASIO.

Usually if you don't need to record, audio you can usually achieve respectable low latency with built in audio using ASIO4All. Set your ASIO buffers low. 128 or 64 usually works on most systems.

If that works, your PC is probably not the problem. If ASIO4ALL works, and you don't need to record audio, you are probably fine just with built-in audio. I would forget about sound quality. If you don't hear anything (noise, distortion), you are fine. Main limitation with ASIO4ALL is it will only handle one stream, so you won't be able to have Ableton open while playing a YouTube video for example. ASIO4ALL also lacks virtual audio inputs for recording PC Streams. Most interfaces usually have these features (at least the Scarlett does). There are other ASIO4ALL solutions with more bells and whistles but IMO those have worse latency performance. ASIO4ALL can get pretty low probably better than many interfaces.

Audio interface drivers and latency can vary alot even if using ASIO, if you need an Interface. Most are usually manageable for playback of softsynths.


For low latency and fairly low price the Focusrite Scarletts work pretty well. They are not the best, but aren't the worst and one of the better ones for USB interfaces.

For something better, expect to spend more money alot more. RME are known for low latency even with USB.

That said I'm fairly surprised as most modern USB interfaces should be pretty decent for playing softsynths.

Older unsupported interfaces though can give you trouble.

I bought alot of interfaces over the years (Scarletts, Echo Layla, Presonus, UAD, Yamaha, Maschine, Push 3) and the only one that gave me bad results was the Yamaha Audiogram.

Everything else was pretty decent.

Scarletts though have been pretty consistent though and works pretty good with different PCs.

Do your research. It might be worthwhile trying a Guitar Center and seeing if they will let you try plugging to your laptop to test.


Also make sure your Windows pc is optimized. These days it is mainly tweaking your power settings. There are YouTube tutorials. You will get alot more performance on a Windows box if properly tweaked and it is not that difficult as it once was years ago but even the fastest Windows PC will be pretty bad if not tweaked.

As far as picking a laptop, the biggest thing is a processor with good single core performance. I will take a guess that your PC is probably fine as it is a Core i7 but there are alot of variation among Intel processors so it is good to know where your PC ranks using CPU Benchmark.

There is also a program to run DPC latency checker I think that can determine if your PC is suited for audio production. I'm guessing it probably is although might not be optimized.

[Yearofthegoat]

Run LatencyMon and see what drivers come up as affecting your DPC and latency.

Good bet that ACPI is in there - if you can disable it in your BIOS, you'll get much better audio, i.e. fewer interruptions or dropouts.

Also, a couple of other things:

Check your PCI interrupt settings

MSI in Windows
The big breakthrough came with setting as many hardware drivers to use Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) as possible.

To check what's using what, go to Device Manager and select View, Resources by Type, expand the Interrupt request (IRQ) tree and scroll down towards the bottom. You're looking for (PCI) devices.

After the '(PCI) 0x.......' part there is a number in brackets. If this number is negative, it means the device is using MSI (which is good). If it's positive, you might try changing it to negative and see if it improves your LatencyMon result - and the pops and crackles etc. of course.

Keep device manager open and run Regedit.

In Device Manager, double-click one of the devices with the positive number, this will open up that device's properties. Click the Details tab, then drop down the Property list until you see Device Instance Path. The value field is what you need to look for in Regedit.

So, in Regedit, navigate through:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Enum
PCI

This will give you a list of PCI devices. Find the one you're looking for in the list. Navigate through the entries (click the little triangle) until you reach Device Parameters\Interrupt Management and - if it's there - open up MessageSignaledInterruptProperties.

The MSISupported entry (REG_DWORD) tells Windows whether to use MSI or not for that device. 1 means use it, 0 means don't use MSI.

BEFORE YOU CHANGE THE ENTRY: set a restore point (Control Panel, System Protection ....) so you can get back your system if it hangs / crashes / doesn't work. Once you've changed it, reboot, and test your latency again.

If the MSI entry isn't present, it's because either the hardware or the hardware driver doesn't support MSI. For example, my bog standard SATA controller driver didn't support MSI, but after I installed the Intel Rapid Storage driver, I could use that for MSI.

In power settings, make sure USB suspension is off. Control Panel, Power Options, [select your power plan - should be High Performance or better for audio], Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Power Settings, USB Settings, USB selective suspend setting=Disabled
You can also check your USB Hubs in Device Manager to see if they have 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' enabled in the Power Management tab. Double-click each hub in Device Manager to open Properties, then click the Power Management tab. If any are set to allow, untick the box.

The aforementioned items allowed my laptop to run DAW software at acceptable latency for MIDI keyboard playing and recording. Unfortunately one of the big priorities for laptops is power-saving, so you might need to undo some of that for good audio latency. You might not need to do any of these, but I thought they might help.

The MSI one is a keeper, the ACPI one you'll need to switch back again, but you could probably leave the USB hub changes - or not if you don't like keeping USB devices on.

[SimonWilliamsGB]

Thanks for all your answers – and I can confirm that following this advice I’ve managed to bring down the latency to a level that is playable. In the best setting, I can still tell there is a delay between the hardware module and the software but on it’s own, it’s not noticeable.

My setup is fairly simple - I began this with a new laptop before I installed most of the junk. The keyboard has MIDI Out 1 going to the hardware sound module and MIDI Out 2 through the MIDI adaptor cable to a USB-C port. I've been using Ableton Live 10 with one of the default instruments (usually Grand Piano, but sometimes other instruments) dragged onto the first MIDI column. Output straight to the laptop speakers.

I've also tried using the laptop keyboard as MIDI input with similar results, but harder to be certain as I don't get the hardware notes at the same time.

I've been using an ASIO driver - I started with the existing Realtek ASIO drivers installed when the laptop arrived - then I installed ASIO4ALL as recommended and it is an improvement, but there is still a delay (though it took some getting used to).

I wasted a bit of time trying to work out what my actual latency was – before I realized that it’s shown on the Ableton Audio settings screen! When I finally looked, I found that the Realtek ASIO driver was showing about 18ms – though that seemed to vary randomly when I made changes. However, when I switched to ASIO4ALL I managed to get it down to a respectable 8.75ms with 64 samples.

I tried DPC Latency checker and it shows an average of ~1560us and max of 1857us - apparently that's OK.

Also, tried LatencyMon and that pinpointed ACPI.sys as a high offender (1800 us) - just not sure how to turn it off yet. I turned off in Device Manager but it was still running - and there's now option to disable in BIOS.

I switched to High Performance and disabled the USB suspension - but I now need to check any PCI devices (only 5 have a positive number).

Final result, for now; I’m comfortable playing software instruments through Ableton now and am expecting to make some use of Roland Cloud subscriptions now. On the other hand, I will still keep saving up to buy a hardware synth (probably Fantom or MODX+), but with less urgency.

Thanks again for your help.

[jlgrimes]

Thanks for all your answers – and I can confirm that following this advice I’ve managed to bring down the latency to a level that is playable. In the best setting, I can still tell there is a delay between the hardware module and the software but on it’s own, it’s not noticeable.

My setup is fairly simple - I began this with a new laptop before I installed most of the junk. The keyboard has MIDI Out 1 going to the hardware sound module and MIDI Out 2 through the MIDI adaptor cable to a USB-C port. I've been using Ableton Live 10 with one of the default instruments (usually Grand Piano, but sometimes other instruments) dragged onto the first MIDI column. Output straight to the laptop speakers.

I've also tried using the laptop keyboard as MIDI input with similar results, but harder to be certain as I don't get the hardware notes at the same time.

I've been using an ASIO driver - I started with the existing Realtek ASIO drivers installed when the laptop arrived - then I installed ASIO4ALL as recommended and it is an improvement, but there is still a delay (though it took some getting used to).

I wasted a bit of time trying to work out what my actual latency was – before I realized that it’s shown on the Ableton Audio settings screen! When I finally looked, I found that the Realtek ASIO driver was showing about 18ms – though that seemed to vary randomly when I made changes. However, when I switched to ASIO4ALL I managed to get it down to a respectable 8.75ms with 64 samples.

I tried DPC Latency checker and it shows an average of ~1560us and max of 1857us - apparently that's OK.

Also, tried LatencyMon and that pinpointed ACPI.sys as a high offender (1800 us) - just not sure how to turn it off yet. I turned off in Device Manager but it was still running - and there's now option to disable in BIOS.

I switched to High Performance and disabled the USB suspension - but I now need to check any PCI devices (only 5 have a positive number).

Final result, for now; I’m comfortable playing software instruments through Ableton now and am expecting to make some use of Roland Cloud subscriptions now. On the other hand, I will still keep saving up to buy a hardware synth (probably Fantom or MODX+), but with less urgency.

Thanks again for your help.

1857 us is great.

That's under 2 ms. If that is round-trip, then your actual softsynth latency is most likely less than that probably under 1 ms.

For playing synths, the output latency is the main thing to worry about.

If doing any input monitoring through audio is where you will experience the full effect of roundtrip latency.

Any hardware digital synth (and probably even most analogs) will probably be similar to that and probably even worse on some as midi will add latency (about 1ms) in itself. so you can never really escape latency completely.