Ableton Forum

Hi,

Equipment:
PC Intel t2300, 1.66 ghz, 1 gig ram
M Audio firewire 1814, midi running out through this too.
Live 5.0.2
roland tr 909
Reason 3

Problem:
Simple, when having 909 sync'd via the midi out, the drum sounds coming into the computer are delayed. I know about latency ( i have read the manual), but i am still unable to fix it. When i record the drum sounds, they are off in relation to other drum tracks, rewired from reason, so that two sound which start on the first down beat of the bar, are out enough that they sound bad.

How do i fix this problem?

I have tried the midi/sync delay in the prefernces, no joy, and i have tried the track delay under the mixer controls in the session view. This partly works, but is there a better way? The problem with this is that when i record the delayed clip and then play it back it is out again.

The value i have in it is -52ms, and it still sound out, but not so bad. Is it a case of trial and error?

Surely there is something simple i am missing.

any help would be appreciated as i ahve spent weeks nearly smashing something in despair.

Thanks,

kpa

Hi,
Our setup is close to yours and we have spent weeks on this as well. I thinks a better way to the problem (well not really a problem but more of a technical obstable) is to put ableton into external sync mode and use the 909 as a master clock.

Now go to the preference tab under MIDI/Sync, click on your input device left of the yellow "ON" Sync light, and a MIDI Sync Delay window appears further down the tab. This delay can be either positive or negative depending. Adjust it while listenning until you hear things synchronized.

Note that the individual track delays in session view are disabled when you are in external sync mode, but you shouldn't need them since you are now compensating in the midi clock signal itself. You can always insert Simple Delays on individual channels if you still want to play with that anyway (just cant go negative now).

hope this helps...

also check the bug fixes for live 5
i seem to remember a fix for latency compensation errors somewhere around 5.03

so u might want to upgrade...

thanks, i'll give these both a try.

kpa

Have you tried setting the tracks outputs to external 1/2 (or 3/4, 5/6, etc...)intsead of master. Im not too familiar with your sound card but I run a motu 828 first generation and I get a crazy amount of latency when Im writing/listening to the midi in ableton through to my outboard gear for resampling. this basically tells your sound card to monitor sraight through itself instead of through ableton which Helps to greatly reduce any latency issues Ive had. It may or may not work with your card I know we would use the same premise in DP4 by monitoring directly through the hardware and it worked fine with the 828 but when we used on our FW1884 A/D Board it didnt work the same we had to configure the board in another fashion....

Anyway hoped this helped.....
peace233