MIDI playback timing sloppiness help

timsmolens · Post by **timsmolens** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 7:15 am

11.3 is performing much better for me than 11.22. I am still having a weird issue where MIDI playback timing is sloppy for 30 seconds to a minute, and slowly gets better until it starts playing correctly. If I let it rest for a few minutes or hop to a new section that behavior will repeat itself. Is there some setting I should consider as a possible culprit? Has anyone else experience this?

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 8:29 am

timsmolens wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 7:15 am 11.3 is performing much better for me than 11.22. I am still having a weird issue where MIDI playback timing is sloppy for 30 seconds to a minute, and slowly gets better until it starts playing correctly. If I let it rest for a few minutes or hop to a new section that behavior will repeat itself. Is there some setting I should consider as a possible culprit? Has anyone else experience this?

What is your system setup (Mac, OS)? Have you tried disabling plugins? Reached out to MOTU?

Not an issue here under 11.22/23. See my sig for my system info. I just updated to 11.3, but have not seen the issue here either.

dewdman42 · Post by **dewdman42** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 9:26 am

Is the sloppiness feeding to software instruments or to external instruments?

timsmolens · Post by **timsmolens** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 1:50 pm

dewdman42 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 9:26 am Is the sloppiness feeding to software instruments or to external instruments?

I am triggering Kontakt vi's

dewdman42 · Post by **dewdman42** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 2:04 pm

Hmm, that is strange. I can't think of any reason why there should be sloppiness but I am hearing more and more reports that lead me to wonder if this is an issue with the performance vs efficiency cores...which Mac are you using?

timsmolens · Post by **timsmolens** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 3:49 pm

dewdman42 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 2:04 pm Hmm, that is strange. I can't think of any reason why there should be sloppiness but I am hearing more and more reports that lead me to wonder if this is an issue with the performance vs efficiency cores...which Mac are you using?

Mac M2 mini pro

dewdman42 · Post by **dewdman42** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 3:53 pm

Well what I can say is that there has been a lot of talk lately about Apple Silicon and core usage on the LogicPro side of things..don't know what else to say. Timing should always be dead perfect to software instruments, so that sounds like a bug to me, make sure to report it to MOTU.

cuttime · Post by **cuttime** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 7:31 pm

Not seeing it on an M1 machine.

dewdman42 · Post by **dewdman42** » Thu Dec 07, 2023 8:13 pm

the M1 has 8 performance cores and in some cases DAW"s were just using the performance cores. Newer models are providing less performance cores and more efficiency cores...and some DAW's are only using the performance cores (not DP as I understand it). Some are using both, and I don't know the exact details but I just know some of the key developers from VSL, Steinberg, Apple and others have been at conferences lately talking a bout some problems related to multi-threading and core management with these two different types of cores and some challenges related to such. It's perfectly possible that latency and buffering logic could be different or confused by these advancements. I'm not saying that is the absolute reason, i am just saying there has been a lot fo talk about it lately. On the LogicPro forum there are a number of users suddenly having weird latency problems with the most recent release of LogicPro also. Not everyone. (shrug).

ANyway all your can do is report the bug to MOTU...

timsmolens · Post by **timsmolens** » Fri Dec 08, 2023 9:56 am

I made a MOTU support ticket. Here is the unlisted video I sent them to demonstrate the problem.

https://youtu.be/6yqNE3AikIs

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Dec 09, 2023 1:53 am

What version of Kontakt are you using? It’s very possible that might be the issue. I can’t remember the version number but there was one version of Kontakt 7 that NI released that was absolutely horrible and had major issues and caused exactly these kinds of problems. Furthermore, although NI recommended downgrading which fixed the issue for many users, that didn’t work for me. Fact is, that version jacked my my M1 Max Mac Studio so bad (playback on other DAWs also affected) that downgrading Kontakt 7 didn’t fix it for me and I ended up doing a restore or my boot drive to the state it was in prior to updating to that cursed version of Kontakt 7.

Not in my studio now so don’t can figure out exact version number until I search this site for it… but it was serious bad news and that might be what’s going on here.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Dec 09, 2023 2:09 am

Okay I’m not in studio so I had to do a search. Found this topic: viewtopic.php?t=73556

Kontakt 7.6.1 was a nightmare and it caused these exact problems for me and even more severe MIDI timing issues in other DAWs like Cubase for example.

If you have 7.6.1 on there now then that’s definitely your problem. If you EVER HAD 7.6.1 on your system at ANY POINT that still could be the problem. I’d bet the farm Kontakt 7 is the problem here.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Sun Dec 10, 2023 7:06 am

Tim, appreciate it if you'd create a signature with system info... that way, I won't have to keep scrolling thru this thread to fid that you are running an M2 Mini. Still don't know what OS version you are running.

Really helps when offering assistance. Thanks.

Hopefully, MOTU can assist. James' info re: Kontakt is good info that could be pertinent. K7.7.2 seems to have remedied and is now available on Native Access.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sun Dec 10, 2023 1:46 pm

HCMarkus wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 7:06 amJames' info re: Kontakt is good info that could be pertinent. K7.7.2 seems to have remedied and is now available on Native Access.

The reason I think it might be useful, is in my case, once I installed the bogus 7.6.1 version, downgrading didn't fix things for me. Something remained jacked up and I ended up having to do a restore of my boot drive in the state it was in PRIOR to installing 7.6.1. It was not fun.

I do not know if later versions with the "fix" would have overwritten whatever 7.6.1 messed up. Maybe. But as I said, downgrading didn't and the issue lingered until I restored my boot drive. Just getting rid of 7.6.1 wasn't enough in my case.

Oh... I'll also add that I looked at his video and his project is full of Kontakt 7 instances and the symptoms are exactly what I experienced after installing Kontakt 7.6.1. Dollars to donuts this is not a DP issue. I don't know if OP has any other DAWs installed on his system, but I'd suggest if he does to make a project in another DAW, add a few Kontakt instances and some associated MIDI tracks and see if they stutter also.

timsmolens · Post by **timsmolens** » Mon Dec 11, 2023 12:22 am

I think I may have fixed this sloppy MIDI problem. I had a massive MIDI template of mostly kontakt instruments that was taking 25GB of 32GB of memory and the MIDI was very sloppy. When I removed the large string sections and large choirs in kontakt and got the existing instruments to take up about 15 GB of RAM. I would still hope that DP would play the MIDI correctly but at least I found a work around. For my large templates I got the ROMPLER plug in Xpand 2 which has tons of instruments that sound average at best but take up almost no RAM or CPU, so I left some of my go to Kontakt instruments in the template but filled up the other half of the template with Xpand2 instruments that I would plan to replace once I record the song properly. Xpand2, although not a great sounding VI. adds a ton of flexibility and even using 30 or 40 instruments on it has almost no effect on RAM and CPU so is rather useful.

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