MIDI latency issue

[dazzjazz]

Despite being a professional player who has done a lot of metronome work, I cannot seem to get my MIDI performances to be an accurate reproduction of my playing. Parts that I play right on top of the beat are consistently rendered 12-30 ticks after the beat. Sure, I get some styles are behind the beat and groovy as a result, but I don’t always play that way. The only way I can get my parts right on top of the beat is to play very unnaturally ahead of the beat - which shouldn’t be necessary.

Could it be my system being too old? My iMac is 10 years old now, but I have 24 GB RAM. I connect via the MIDI interface on my Focusrite Clarett 8pre.

Anyone else have this issue?

[HCMarkus]

A couple of things... away from studio, so inexact suggestions...

Sync MIDI option in, IIRC, MIDI Preferences... tends to put MIDI later if enabled.

Adjust I/O timing via, IIRC, Audio Preferences.

[dazzjazz]

Thanks Markus,

At present I have:

Auto-channelize enabled
Patch Thru in Background enabled
Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru enabled
Solo front most MIDI window enabled
Record MIDI as clips disabled.

Any of these the likely culprit?

[James Steele]

Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru enabled

Try turning that one off. Seems counterintuitive I know.

[HCMarkus]

Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru enabled

Try turning that one off. Seems counterintuitive I know.

Yes. Since MIDI is being recorded late on your system, turning Sync Recorded MIDI to Patch Thru off will likely improve things.

The idea behind this is as follows; There is always a bit of latency from the time your finger strikes a key until the MIDI instruction is delivered to DP and the note is heard from a VI. As such, when performing, we tend to rush just a tad, instinctively compensating for the delay. With Sync Recorded MIDI to Patch Thru enabled, DP places the MIDI event at the (slightly delayed) time when the VI note was heard as you performed.

With my 5,1 Mac Pro, I found timing was best with Sync Recorded MIDI to Patch Thru disabled.

With my current Mac Studio, I am finding things are working best for me with Sync Recorded MIDI to Patch Thru enabled.

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Every time I start a new project, I have to disable this "feature" in preferences. I suppose the only way to avoid that would be to save a template with it already disabled, correct?

Doug

[dazzjazz]

Thanks for the advice.
I did a quick comparison yesterday with it switched off and timing seems better. Hoping it helps when I start recording actual takes.
Gosh over the years that’s really cost me some hours…learning to play ahead of the beat!

[dazzjazz]

Okay - I'm doing actual takes now and it's still lagging. No much how much I rush the time.

Any ideas of what else I could try please?

Darren

[HCMarkus]

Still lagging. A few questions/thoughts:

When you are playing, are you using a VI or your keyboard's built-in sounds?If using built-in sounds, are you triggering voices using DP's MIDI thru or directly using Local Control? If using built-in sounds via Local Control, you may tend to play later, as there is potentially little of the latency associated with MIDI.

If you are lucky enough to own a Yamaha acoustic piano with built-in MIDI, this could be a source of timing issues. I seem to recall reading that there is a significant delay somewhere in these machines.

While performing, do your notes sound in time, yet the MIDI recording/playback is late? Simple fix: slip MIDI notes earlier in time after you finish a take. Set your arrow keys to advance/delay the amount you need.

Assuming you are not getting timing issues from other gear, the place I'd look to really address the issue is Recording and Playback Offset (Fine Tune Audio I/O Timing) in DP. There is a section in the getting Started manual, methinks. You might want to try advancing Audio Playback; you will hear the reference audio earlier and thus play your parts earlier. You might have to delay Audio Recording to compensate.

One more thing: I discovered that if buffer size is changed while an audio track is record-enabled, audio recordings will be misaligned. Haven't tested this lately; I last noted this in DP9 under Mojave, IIRC.

Let me emphasize: All of this is IIRC... read the manual section and experiment. You might find your answer. Good luck!

[James Steele]

It might also be that you have some high latency plugins on your Master Fader? Like Ozone, etc? I'm sort of grappling with this as a potential issue myself as I've gotten into the habit (probably not good) of liking to put several higher latency plugs like Ozone and ARC 3 on my Master Fader and that I think adds to the delay in hearing the notes when you play a VI.

Try adding a second Master Fader with no plug-ins and when you want to do an overdub, move it to the left of the Master Fader with the plug-ins in the Mixing Board. I discovered you can have TWO Master Faders. The one that is leftmost in the Mixer (or perhaps earlier in the track order in the Track Overview) takes priority and becomes the active one.

I'm still looking into better solutions that have been suggested to me like using V Racks. It also dawned on me tonight to try to setup another stereo "From Computer" pair in the AVB Router and set the output of a track I'm recording to to that stereo pair that hopefully mixes with the main DAW "From Computer" pair in the AVB Mixer, but without the latency of the Master Fader plugins. If that makes any sense. I'm going to try that in the morning.

[dazzjazz]

Thanks James and Markus,

I am triggering a piano in Kontakt via my Yamaha CP4.

I have no audio tracks so far, and no plugins on the master fader. I just have one instance of Kontakt, Addictive Drums and Trillian Bass each. What I play sounds right during the take, but not during playback. I can “cover the metronome” with my playing easily, I’d play right on top of the beat, but the MIDI is rendered 12-42 ticks late.

Maybe it’s a poor MIDI implementation in my CP4? Not sure how I would test that. I will however change from using the Focusrite’s MIDI input and go via my fast lane usb and see if that’s better.

I will dive into the manual again. Oh how I hate MIDI!

[HCMarkus]

Thanks James and Markus,

I am triggering a piano in Kontakt via my Yamaha CP4.

I have no audio tracks so far, and no plugins on the master fader. I just have one instance of Kontakt, Addictive Drums and Trillian Bass each. What I play sounds right during the take, but not during playback. I can “cover the metronome” with my playing easily, I’d play right on top of the beat, but the MIDI is rendered 12-42 ticks late.

Maybe it’s a poor MIDI implementation in my CP4? Not sure how I would test that. I will however change from using the Focusrite’s MIDI input and go via my fast lane usb and see if that’s better.

I will dive into the manual again. Oh how I hate MIDI!

I think we can narrow this down for you a bit; thanks for the new information.

If you haven't already, before you do anything, disable Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru and see what that gets you. Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru enabled will tend to place MIDI notes later than if it is disabled. I would recommend you leave Sync Recorded MIDI to patch thru disabled while doing the following operations.

Since your keyboard and Kontakt allow you to perform/monitor in-time, there is not an issue in these components. MIDI is getting to Kontakt on-time, and sounding on time. MIDI is just being placed late in your timeline by DP, indicating the issue will likely best be resolved by looking into the aforementioned Getting Started Manual. I took a look... for DP10, Page 35 is where you want to head to find Fine Tune Audio I/O Timing.

As I noted before, I am pretty sure you will want to advance Audio Playback. Once you get Audio advanced properly (so, when you record, you hear the advanced audio and your newly-recorded MIDI data lines up in your timeline), go back and delay Audio Recording by looping a pre-recorded track with transient on the grid back into DP, recording it again, then comparing timing. You will probably see the new track running ahead of the beat, because you advanced Audio Playback.

In Summary, from memory, so it should work:

1. ADVANCE Audio timing; you will now HEAR Audio earlier, because DP is playing it back earlier.

2. RECORD your MIDI performances as you advance Audio incrementally (you might have to do this a numb er of times).

As you Advance Audio Playback, you should see newly-recorded MIDI moving closer to the proper on-beat locations in your timeline. You can check for alignment by quantizing 100% some on-beat MIDI notes, then playing back and listening for in-time sounding playback. If the playback has MIDI-triggered notes running behind, advance Audio Playback. If the MIDI-triggered notes are running ahead, delay Audio Playback.

You can also line things up by using a VI with sharp transient. Place some MIDI Notes perfectly on-time. Play back the VI Output and record to an Audio Track. Line up the Audio Transients to align VISUALLY (on the timeline) with the on-time MIDI Notes. Playback the recoded Audio and the MIDI-triggered VI together and time-shift the MIDI notes until the two sounds flam. Note how many sample you had to move the MIDI. If you had to move the MIDI Earlier in time, ADVANCE Audio Playback by the same number of samples. If the MIDI had to move Later in time to flam with the Audio, DELAY Audio Playback by the number of samples you moved the MIDI.

REPEAT Step 2 until Audio and MIDI Playback are lined up.

3. RECORD your in-time Audio track back into a new DP Audio track. Compare timing visually/aurally and adjust the RECORD OFFSET until you get everything lining up again.

Note that placement of MIDI notes might vary depending on DP Buffer Size. If so, before doing final testing, put DP's buffer at the size you typically have it for recording.

Also, make sure to record-disable tracks when changing buffer size, as changing the buffer while leaving tracks record-enabled might produce weird results.

Good Luck!

[dazzjazz]

Thanks so very much - that's daunting but I will give it a shot.

Regards

Darren

[dazzjazz]

Okay I've begun the process, check this out:

I've switched over to using my Fastane 2x2 USB MIDI interface. Timing seems better, but not great.
Here's an interesting observation - I've just tracked both audio and MIDI from my JX8P.
The MIDI note lands at 006 ticks and it's audio lands at 032 - see attached image.Obviously this is not ideal right?

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 10.34.21 am.png (58.6 KiB) Viewed 2547 times

[James Steele]

I'm struggling a bit with this now doing some experimentation.

Firstly in my case, I set up TWO Master Fader tracks. One has my "pseudo mastering" chain, so there's a lot of latency which is affecting how immediate it feels when I'm playing an organ preset in Falcon. So I make a second Master Fader, also for my main outputs, with NO plugins on it. DP's mixing board gives precedence to the "leftmost" Master Fader track. So when I want to track, I move the Master Fader with no plugs to the left of the Master Fader with plugins. Now when I play a note on my MIDI controller keyboard it feels pretty immediate, considering my hardware buffer is set to 256 samples.

What's interesting to me, is that I generally tend to play on top of the beat anyway, but I tried to lay back and be on the beat and even when I'm sure I did that, the MIDI notes are landing a little bit early. I tried enabling "Sync Recorded MIDI to Patch Thru" but then it was even worse landing VERY late.

So who knows... maybe I'll need to mess with this calibration setup HC Markus is talking about. Generally I tend to quantize as I'm not that good a keyboard player, but this is troubling as sometimes I would want a realtime performance for a simple part to keep it "organic".. but it's not a true representation of what I was playing as it stands. I'll need to sus this out.

I might be interesting to see if any of the other DAWs (that I really just dabble with) are better at this and have devised a method to fix this problem. I may experiment with that when I have some time.