7 replies to this topic

[dylab]

i've been working with my drumstation and trying to get it as tight as I can when recording into live
I've been through the driver compensation stuff and figured out monitoring external hardware fucks it up when recording
and so i created drum rack for my drumstation and using that i freeze midi patterns then drag then over to audio channel to check how close they are getting - the result is less than a 1ms but not bang on as you can see below.
Is there anyway to improve this without dropping coin on something like innerclock's gear or is this inherit midi delay?

[Jester_Fu]

Midi has optoisolators on the input and output. There's an inherent delay with it and the best you can generally hope for is that all your midi instruments stay relatively well synced. Syncing with VST's and wave audio can be an issue and the only way to compensate is to add delays to the VST/Audio channels or bounce the midi sound down to audio and then fix it that way.

It's really something like:

Delay in processing from Sequencer->delay to transfer to midi interface->delay for midi interface->delay in transmission to instrument->delay in conversion from midi to instrument 'native' language->delay in sound coming out of instrument.

If you thrn bounce the audio from the midi instrument down, you can add the latency of the soundcard in there.

So, 1ms isn't that bad.

[SilverStreak]

1ms is fuckall. Cant you just put 1ms delay on your vst's and waves?

Im a fan of some mild midi delay...sometimes its just perfect

[dylab]

thats good to know
the whole turning off monitring while recording has made the timing in ableton heaps tighter
when i get some time i want to see how much delay i get between the analogue gear and the midi stuff
then might go for one of those din sync AU outs

[SilverStreak]

^^^

dude what are these din sync AU outs you speak of?  They sound interesting.

[dylab]

there are 3 ways of doing this I know of

the most expensive is MOTU VOLTA - can send a bunch of CV/trigger and pulse outs from your sound card to your old gear
http://www.motu.com/...software/volta/

the second is expert sleepers silent way which at $50 is a bargain cv/gate trigger LFO and din sync out of your sound card
http://www.expert-sl.../silentway.html

then thrid and free option is rhoovs din sync audio unit which creates din sync out
http://www.soundpunk...hp?topic=2555.0

[neo]

1ms is not bad! you can probably do something with track delay to get it bang on.

[Spectrum]

Quote

...or is this inherit midi delay?

2 x MIDI messages appearing at the same time in the MIDI sequencer will be spaced around a millisecond apart when the go down the MIDI cable. That's just MIDI.

Unless one is layering, say, multiple kicks or layering multiple hats over MIDI (ie. layering similar sounds to make 'em sound tougher), then I reckon it's gonna be a futile case to sync 'em absolutely perfectly.

There are tricks, however, to tighten things up:
- use one instrument per MIDI cable (ie. don't daisy-chain devices via THRU ports),
- use time-stamped MIDI interfaces (not sure Live supports these, might be only a Cubase/Logic/Pro Tools thing, and then only with their respectively branded interfaces),
- nudge non-timing-critical notes (eg. strings) away from timing-critical notes (ie. drums), if only by a single MIDI event, to ensure the drum notes are prioritised to sound first.

But does it really matter?

Stand side-on to live drummer and one will naturally be hearing the high-hats 2 to 3 milliseconds ahead of the ride cymbal (ie. the ride cymbal will be heard late, by an fraction of a second), as the speed of sound lags around a millisecond for every foot (or 34.4cm) in distance that it needs to travel further to reach your ears.

Of course, if you are layering similar sounds for impact, then I totally can appreciate to get 'em locked right down to the micro-sample level to eliminate varying phasing artifacts in the final sound, but if it's just the groove you're worried about, I wouldn't worry.

Unless, of course, your name is Brian Transeau.
http://www.lunarmaga...features/bt.php

Classic article from 2002, and rings some truths as far as layering sounds goes (and I suspect this is simply where BT is coming from, despite the internets uproar by MIDI hardware geeks at the time ). However, if one follows some care in managing their MIDI cables and note allocation in the sequencer grid, then the groove should escape relatively unscathed.

Oh, something else I thought of, I wonder just how tight some of the samples in my modules are trimmed in the first place. After tearing my hair out (not unlike you right now) in getting perfect to-the-ms drum hit recordings, and find once I'd got it perfect, I'd play another drum kit and it could be out of whack again, it occurred to me that the source samples inside the hardware module might not be trimmed perfectly to the waves actual start point, and their might be a slight buffer of silence in front of some samples. Might be something else to consider, especially if you're finding you'll get it right tweaking all sorts of delay compensation for one drum instrument then find that pushes another instrument out in the opposite direction.

Anyway, I thought no-one used MIDI anymore.