Delay compensation when recording external sequenced synths/drum machines

[CountDooku]

Hello!

My goal is to record external drum machines/sequenced synths and have the timing line up with Live's grid in the Arrangement view. So all downbeats and time divisions line up with the bar.

Right now, recorded audio comes in about 35ms late. Tracks still stay in time, and I'm able to continue recording external audio while monitoring in Live alongside other tracks. (please see my config below for specific settings)

The problem becomes when if I try to line up/nudge (by simply selecting my clips and moving them earlier) my recorded clips so they are perfectly in time with the Arrangement grid/transport. Now, when I go to record new material from the external instruments, it's out of time. This makes sense to me, but for some reason messing with track delays etc still doesn't seem to shift the external audio earlier.

Is there some way to do this such that Ableton is basically adjusting its timing grid to match the delay in the external audio? I'm trying not to just delay/pre-delay the audio coming from the track, but have it line up with the grid, because it's easier to edit that way.

Settings:
Delay Compensation (checked)
Reduced Latency When Monitoring (checked)
Buffer size 64
Sample rate 44100
Driver Error Compensation (none)
Midi clock sync (pattern, no delay)
Ableton is master - any my external sequencer is ignorning clock, only using transport START/STOP (I get issues with Octatrack otherwise)
Live 11 on a brand new Mac Studio

^ again all of this works fine in terms of keeping my audio from the external instruments and Live in sync... its just all of the resulted audio is shifted off the grid.

Am I thinking about this wrong? Whats the way here?

Thanks!