HEAVY ISSUES with audio and midi!

Preferences/Audio Right below the I/O Buffer size you will see:

Recording Delay.

Each buffer size will have it's own specific Record Delay setting.
If you always work at the same I/O Buffer you can leave the Record Delay set as well.

Since you're comfortable enough with the software to figure out the 15ms discrepancy it should be easy enough to figure out the correct delay setting.

pancenter-

Apropos:

Having fiddled with the MIDI offset for a while, I get the impression that the recording offset varies quite a bit from recording to recording. I assume the fact that my interface (ESI 4x4) uses the generic USB MIDI driver contributes to the variance, but I do wonder if others are seeing this phenomenon?

(I stopped bothering and resigned to manual correction after the fact, since my various drum machines and their sync converters have different timing offsets, anyway. But I'm still curious.)

producer3012 wrote:
thank you very much, but i have the impression that its the midi track that isnt right...
is there any way how i can find which track is wrong...or maybe they are both wrong?!
how can i be sure?!
thaanx for your help!

There's an easy way to test this.

Pick a sound with a quick attack/decay (rimshot) and record only a MIDI track, record eighth or quarter notes for a few bars.

Arm an audio track, play the MIDI track back while recording the synth track.

What kind of offset do you see now?

Out of curiosity, are you using any plugins on the master bus or audio track?

pancenter-

producer3012 wrote:
and i am using only audio instruments...sorry, i was not mentioning this before! and the delay or offset is always changing (dependent on the buffersize)

Only audio instruments?

Why did you write this?

"when i record both the audio signal and the midi data of my keyboard (one as a stereo track and the other as standard midi track) they incoming and recorded events are NOT in the same place ...there s a differnce from more than 15 ms!!!"

Do you mean the audio is different from the MIDI track after you bounce the Audio Instrument to an aiff/wav file or Freeze the audio instrument track?

pancenter-

producer3012 wrote:
sorry...my mistake...i am totally confused:-))) you are right..the audio of my hardware keyboard ( NO AUINST) and the midi doesnt match!

thanx

Well, until you do what I advised it's going to continue to be like that.
I outlined the necessary steps to take, I'm not going to repeat myself.

Ok, once more....

It's in Preferences/Audio look for "Record Delay" it has both positive and negative settings. It's there to fix the exact problem you're having TRY IT!

And yes, the timing will vary with different buffer settings.

All MIDI/Audio sequencers have this problem to a greater or lesser extent.

pancenter-

spheric wrote:
Apropos:

Having fiddled with the MIDI offset for a while, I get the impression that the recording offset varies quite a bit from recording to recording. I assume the fact that my interface (ESI 4x4) uses the generic USB MIDI driver contributes to the variance, but I do wonder if others are seeing this phenomenon?

Same here. If I want accurate recordings, I have to open up each particular session, do the "round-trip audio" test and adjust the recording delay appropriately. I suppose this is analogous to adjusting the heads on a cheap tape machine.

Jon H. wrote:

spheric wrote:
Apropos:

Having fiddled with the MIDI offset for a while, I get the impression that the recording offset varies quite a bit from recording to recording. I assume the fact that my interface (ESI 4x4) uses the generic USB MIDI driver contributes to the variance, but I do wonder if others are seeing this phenomenon?

Same here. If I want accurate recordings, I have to open up each particular session, do the "round-trip audio" test and adjust the recording delay appropriately. I suppose this is analogous to adjusting the heads on a cheap tape machine.

(my understanding)
Logic does not delay compensate MIDI. If using plugins that induce latency you will have to do the round-trip test and adjust accordingly.

I don't remember this being so prevalent, I'm wondering if OSX's control of USB MIDI is going down the tubes.

The "other" German sequencer does compensate for MIDI and generally does not have this problem and is less problematic as far as having timing discrepancies.

pancenter-

MIDI takes it's timing from the audio system, it does not run independently from the audio. That is how an Audio/MIDI sequencer works. MIDI resolution is too coarse, MIDI is tied to the location information reported by the audio driver.. Adjusting record delay can change the MIDI timing. Whether or not that's your problem I don't know.

Many DAW users have a misunderstanding of how a DAW manages to synchronize, as i said, MIDI is not compensated for in Logic AFAIK, and MIDI is slow so it's possible that MIDI is a little late.. but this can be corrected with the Recording Delay/Advance that's been mentioned.


pancenter-

There's the audio delay settings, which compensate for the audio drivers and align material in time with the already-recorded stuff (essential when doing stuff like running recorded tracks through outboard equipment and re-recordiing that to a new track).

If you find that the audio is recorded 15 ms BEHIND the MIDI signal, then simply adjust the audio recording delay to a negative value until they line up.

FWIW, audio latency compensation has not necessarily anything to do with badly-written drivers. EVERY audio interface incurs latency. The driver reports the standard latency to the CoreAudio system, which then passes it on, allowing DAWs to compensate. MIDI drivers don't do this, AFAIK, which can result in discrepancies like you're seeing.

It's a complex and confusing (to me) topic, and since, as I've mentioned, MIDI clock latency appears to vary with the phase of the moon, I've just resigned to manually shifting signals after I've recorded them until they line up.