External Audio being recorded EARLY? (makes no sense)

I bet you are using firewire I/O Audio device from manufacturer that is not writing his own drivers, so your audio device uses native apple firewire driver
which is a crap...

I have had this exact problem a number of times, and it renders Logic somewhat useless to me as I record drum parts through external midi devices, and I need them to be recorded in sync.

I had a MOTU 828MkII, and an AMT8, so I tried other midi and audio interfaces to figure out what the problem was. I could not believe that the delay was a negative delay - and I eventually set the interface delay to a really high number to try and see what that did. Well that did provide a really high delay, and then when I set it back to zero - no problem! It was very strange, as if the parameter was stuck, but showing zero previously. I know when I first installed Logic, it set a delay into this automatically, and I think that's what the problem was. In any case, changing the delay up and down, and then back to zero seemed to fix my problem.

Then eventually months later, the problem came up again. However now I was using an NRV10 Firewire mixer as my audio interface, and a little MOTU Fastlane USB for midi. It's clearly not the interfaces I'm using, it's Logic.

I don't use the plug-in delay compensation, because as I understand it, you will have midi sent out early if you do, and I already have that problem. However it's as if you always have some kind of strange compensation going on. At one point I set the interface buffer to 1024, and guess what, the audio was early by 1024 samples. Then I set it to 512, and then it was 512 early. After messing around with these parameters trying to get it right, it then became more inconsistent, and I could not predict the results. . For example adding 50ms of delay made the midi signal occur earlier! Then I added another 10ms to that, and it was later - go figure.

In any case, this is a serious problem. I'm just trying to record external devices in sync, and it won't do it. Makes all the great features of Logic totally useless.

I have not seen any clear solution posted anywhere, I'm not sure why some people have the problem and other do not. It's not just a bad firewire driver.

Scottt.

Shagghie wrote:
When recording an external drum machine that is midi sync'd to Logic 8's clock, the audio that gets recorded to disk ends up hitting 'early'... In other words, the attack portion of the Kick drum is always recorded AHEAD of the 'down beat' marker in Logic.

That is what the "Record Delay" parameter in Audio Preferences is for.

It's not that your parts are recorded early it's that Logic's PDC is buffering all internal system and sending data out late so if you're recording a live part... vocals, guitar...etc. You will hear everything in sync. Actually most DAWs work this way. However, since you're recording a MIDI part Logic sees it as early because in Logic, MIDI is not PDC compensated for. (At least that's the way it used to be in ver 7.xx) This is/was a Logic fault as MIDI is compensated for in say... Nuendo/Cubase and probably other DAWS as well.

Couple of questions:

What is your Plug-in-Delay compensation set as?
Have you tried the other settings?

Are you using any plugins in the project? (I would think not as it's only MIDI)

pancenter-

Hi, this reply is coming late, but I ran into I think the same thing. I was trying to record my AdrenaLinn drum machine and it was completely out of time with the track.

I was able to fix this pretty simply by setting count-in in the record project setting to none.

Hope that helps!

Mark

Message was edited by: markand

Pancenter. I am having the same problem with my MPC the kick drum comes tooo early. its odd--- my delay thing in Audio precferences is - my audio delay is at -84, i think it came like that stock! should I put it to ZER0? wat do u have it at. Thank you... to be clear this happens, when I record my MPC into audio tracks in logic---- because its synced through midi clock.

Guys,

Go here:

http://logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=22161

I've written up a procedure for dealing with this problem (although it's geared towards people who experience audio recordings that end up being late. But you'll get the idea). I posted this procedure on the Apple/Logic forum some time ago (back in the L7 forum) but it's been updated and amended at the link above (second post from the top).

BTW, if you continue to read that thread, although lengthy, you will see that some people do in fact that recorded audio appears early rather than late. It all depends on your audio interface and the drivers.

Having read this thread a little bit more, there's more to the picture...

Your I/O buffer settings will have no influence on the recording delay setting. Recording delay simply compensates for the inherent delay of A/D processing and the time it takes for the interface's driver to "deliver" the audio data to Logic. Most systems will deliver the audio late. Some deliver it early (and that's because some drivers try to compensate for the delay; sometimes they overdo it).

But the I/O buffer setting will have an influence on how tight MIDI tracks are with respect to audio tracks. I've found that if you have live MIDI tracks against any previously recorded audio tracks, and everything feels right, you should not change the I/O buffer size afterwards because the timing of MIDI against the audio will change.

Actually, the problem that I was having was quite different, and seems to be similar to the original issue. Mine was not simply that audio was being recorded early. Rather it was that midi-sync was completely out of time and unique to using a drum machine or other similar external instrument.

The interesting part of this is that when in playback mode, with a metronome, everything was fine. You could see that the beats were in the right places and everything sounded correct.

However, when you went into record, everything was completely out of time and almost a complete beat off. The snare was on the 1 & 3, rather than the 2 & 4.

The other baffling thing was that when I would hit record and Logic would do the count-in, the drum machine would START! And it would be off tempo and never get back on track. I would expect that while in the count-in, no external instruments would be triggered.

So while this is useful and I'll give it a try, there is definitely an issue with Logic and syncing to external drum machines and possibly more. Removing the count in fixed it for me.

Mark

None of these suggested solutions work....
Anybody have any more ideas???


I have a new Apple dual quad core 2.8Ghz Mac,10 GB RAM,2TB HD,Apogee Ensemble, Emagic Unitor 8 MKII,Logic Pro 8.02,OSX.5.4. isn't all this stuff suposed to work together?????

I am not trying to slave a drum machine or anything else with a clock or any sync at all, I am just simple playing back a MIDI sequence from within Logic routed to an external MIDI synth module and recording it back into Logic as audio. Very academic stuff,in fact I used to could do this on my ATARI 1040STe running C-Lab Creator 1.1 back in 1988!

Now could someone please tell me why the audio is earlier than the MIDI Logic sent out?This happens with all the MIDI external synths,drum machines, Ihave treid not just this particular unit,
THIS IS A LOGIC PROBLEM!
I played with buffer settings, no difference,I turned on and off plugin delay comp,no difference,BTW this is with a brand new song not made from any template, only one audio track and only one MIDI track, I played with recording delay and the audio on beat 1 would be late then on 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.......it would be early, then on bar 25 it was right on time and then it started to get later for every consecutive beat.
Apple saw fit to take away the ability to sync to an external MIDI clock in version 8, now I have to send my clients a clock and record their data and send it back via MIDI to his workstation and it won't record in time?
Should I just tell my clients to go to another studio with their antiquated MIDI gear, that the program that started as one of the best MIDI recording programs, now won't do external MIDI anymore?
This is something that needs to be fixed!
Kenneth Hayes

Let me retract my statement about recording to the 1040STe it was actually did not record audio.
It was rock solid as far as timing though. I never had issues with MIDI and audio syncing from version 3 on until version 7.

Hi!

I got the same issue here. I do not recall having this problem with Logic 7. I found a workaround by setting a delay of 12,0 ms under Logic Pro > Preferences > MIDI > Sync. My external synths are now recorded in sync. The higher the I/O buffer rate, the higher the delay must be.

Hope it helps!