Ableton Forum

Since yesterday, i'm getting really bad midi timing probs with my external hardware .. internal is fine, but the last few things I recorded I had to chop up or warp to get them in time ... wasted an hour last night trying to solve the prob, thinking it was my MIDI chain or hardware acting up.

Anyone else got this??

Ive reported same sort of problems to ableton.
Ive got pretty poor midi in version 5. I hope ableton can sort it out.
Its a problem when making brks and recording them into audio the timing of the midi record and playback seems glitchy.

I've always read that it's best to sync your computer with the hardware, not the other way around. Makes sense, because the computer is more likely to have a timing error (in any software) than hardware.

its not a sync problem, its a midi timig problem - notes are randomly slightly late or early.

Its definately a bug with the midi timing
Its Basically shit midi
Right now recording breaks in from midi to audio is problematic.
I get the first beat cut off halfway by the start marker (Screwing up the loop) or the fade reducing the attack of the first note.
Fix this ableton, give me decent midi or dont bother at all.

Out of curiosity, do you have the same MIDI timing problems regardless of CPU usage? During the live5 beta I found that MIDI clock output started to degrade seriously when my CPU meter passed the 50-60% range (using an AMT8; my Roland UM1 didn't have problems until I pushed the CPU to 80-90%.) I doubt that MIDI clock is "special" -- if there are problems with MIDI clock slop at high CPU usage, then they'd probably affect regular note output as well.

I think we're all talking about the same thing here. It's simply the midi bug that's causing extra latency according to the track monitor setting. It's reproduceable and acknowlegded already. The timing is terrible during recording while track monitoring is set to AUTO or ON as stated here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26856

Here's the workaround (stated on page 4 and 5 of the thread).

During the recording of any midi (hardware or software), set the armed track to monitor OFF. To monitor soft synths during recording, use 2 tracks and record the clip into the second track with monitor OFF. Then drag the clip into the soft synth track after recording and you're good to go.

Let's cross our fingers for a quickie bugfix guys.

You know, I'm not sure we are talking about the same problem.

I have a feeling that there are at least two issues here. The first is the Monitoring on/off latency discrepancy which is recognised as a bug at Ableton.

But I am coming to the conclusion that the actual midi timing is also not as rock solid as it should be.

I have been transferring all my backing tracks for gigging from my trusty Emu E4 back into Live as I hardly turn the sampler on any more (so playing out with it seemed a little luddite). And I've noticed that even with the monitoring turned off the click track is drifting on and off the timing - not by much - but enough to have me a little purturbed.

Needs further testing I think...


G4 DP1.25 1.25GB RAM Lacie D2 Digi 002 Live 5.02 Midisport 1x1

The strange thing is I didnt have any probs b4 last weekend. TIming was solid. Suddenly it sucks. And i almost always had monitor set to auto.

Need to investigate further....

Yeah I don't really know what to say except I've been there too in your position.

Somehow I feel the midi is a little bit inconsitent at times in Live 5, however I have no proof or reproduceable evidence of it. It seems as if the accuracy changes a little bit from 5.0.0 to 5.0.1 to 5.02, sometimes better sometimes worse.

In the lastest build of Live 4, midi was rock solid for me. Actually I was suprised at how accurate it was. So it was beyond my expectations. I didn't think that midi could be that accurate when I analyzed the audio files.

Sometimes I just wonder. This stuff was tweaked already. Why is it when a software company goes to a ver x.0 of anything it's like starting all over again with some of the basics? And I do mean any software developer...not just Ableton.

I can only guess that when they add features there can be unexpected consequences caused by the new code that is added. Hence the reason to only add new features with the release of a new version. If no features are added mid-version, they are working within a controlled environment.

In any case, I tend to agree the midi accuracy in general could use a tweak in Live 5. It's not terrible but could be more like the accuracy in Live 4 IMO.

elemental wrote:Since yesterday, i'm getting really bad midi timing probs with my external hardware .. internal is fine, but the last few things I recorded I had to chop up or warp to get them in time ... wasted an hour last night trying to solve the prob, thinking it was my MIDI chain or hardware acting up.

Anyone else got this??

SINCE VERSION 2!!!!!

In my experience the midi timing accuracy wasn't any better in Logic 7 though. In fact, there is a bug in Logic since ver 6 where midi clock is too early (!) even if you set the midi clock predelay to zero.

Even worse, you couldn't type in a positive value in the delay box to try to make up for the bug.

Oh yeah, and no response when I reported the bug directly to Apple and no fix in the latest version. Reported the bug almost a year ago and again 6 months ago. Several people were crying on the Logic forum about it and the threads went nowhere. People just agreeing and saying yeah me too.

Ableton listens...

icedsushi wrote:

Ableton listens...

yes they do. but i've had this problem since version 2 and all they can say is
"we can't reproduce it here". how hard is is to set up one computer with protools (LE) and send mtc out to another computer with live, set live to EXT, load a song,
and playback to notice the tempo is playing back double time?
at this point you need to disable EXT play a second of the track, re-enable EXT and voila! SINCE V.2!!!

notice my "joined date" search dpel, "major problem with ext sync"

OSC transmits clock and BPM right? I wonder if this is the eventual solution someday (when HW manufacturers support it, if ever).

Sorry to thread jack. I've been having the same problem syncing up my Electribe relaiably to audio clips that are looping in Live. Unfortunately it drifts out of time if you set loops in audio clips via a MIDI keyboard. It seems a bit more stable in 5.02, but it still occurs. And it does often. I wonder, however, if the audio glitches that I get in Live cause the MIDI clock to drift out of time with the looped audio and whether this has to do with needing a faster HD (7200 rpm) and possibly a more powerful laptop (currently using a top of the line Powerbook, but PC laptops are more effecient with CPU so maybe that might help?) I don't know. I've given up trying to solve the problem at this point.

rob.

Just thinking out loud, I wonder if you could use the MIDI monitors in MIDI-OX to look at the timing of MIDI notes coming out of Ableton.
The OX's first column in the monitors is "Timestamp".
I guess you would look to see if some regularly produced notes from a MIDI clip were showing up a regular intervals in the monitor.
If the OX was Yoked to Live on the same computer, that would take away some of the possible problems of real-world MIDI like flaky cables or interference between power cords & midi cables.