great latency of midi recordings

crileo

Hello guys,
I've a problem. Using Nuendo I'm trying to learn how home recording and I was happy enough concerning analog instruments, like drum, bass and guitar.
The problem was born trying to record a midi track using a little master keyboard: the sound is good but in great delay compared with the analogs instruments (very great delay almost a bar). WHAT I'VE WRONG?
Can someone help me ?
Thanks a lot.

Maddogg6

Are you recording the audio output from a VSTi performance? if so - you can expect alot of latency.

Otherwise, if you are recording a MIDI performance using kX synths... I have no clue. Its pretty fast for me. Try re-installing the driver for the joyport. I think I am using CL's joyport driver.. ?? but I dont know if it is bundled with kX or if it a remnant from when I had CL drivers installed...a looooonnnnnggggg time ago.

crileo

Thanks Maddogg6, but I use an USB midi adapter..maybe it's just because of it !
Is it possible ?

Maddogg6

I dunno, but the word MIDI is very vague.

If its routed to a VSTi/DXi - and you are recording the AUDIO from that VSTi/DXi - I would expect a lot of latency.
Instead you should record the MIDI - THEN - software render or record the audio track it would produce.

As a test - just record the MIDI onto a track that has its output MIDI port set to a kX synth. Is that latency very big too?

Maddogg6

also - are you certain you dont have some real time quantizing enabled?

TravelRec.

If you try with kx-synth - you have to load a soundfont first. This is a *.sf2 file that contains sampled sounds. You will find many free SoundFonts in the internet.

crileo

I've thried what you've said and i can tell that the latency is not so big; it's just a little but is there. I thing that has arrived the moment to really change the sound card. I will choose it with the help that you all gave me, but I have to buy it. It's impossible to work with this.

Maddogg6

This is what I do....

I record MIDI performances, monitoring it with a 'proxy' instrument from a Soundfont loaded in a kX synth - its very responsive for me. Then I assign a soft-synth to that MIDI track I just recorded - and use software mixing/bouncing to make that softsynth track render into an audio track (its faster than real time for me using Sonars bounce).

I think you need a pretty fast computer, and/or optimized for DAW to record a soft synths audio from a real time midi performance that is more than simple whole notes.
Or - use a dedicated PC for the softsynth and record the audio from that PC on the DAW PC like its any other audio source.

edit: in reality - I have old projects I recorded MIDI using kX Synths - I then just apply a softsynth later - and I can do that until I find just the right sound, its all non-destructive this way too. /edit

crileo

As soon as possible i'll try to use your method too, Maddogg6, but i really think that my limit is my little sound board, also if I'm using ASIO4ALL. I've noticed that the delay change depending how much programs are running under (just like antivirus...). I'll go and search something like told me DJ_SICK, or with similar characteristic. External USB or firewire, with good slow latency and so on.
I'd like to know your opinion too.
Thanks also to TRAVELREC but I knew it. Thinking that could be the cause of it, i also tried to discharge all soundfonts I had and then recharded only one , but nothing.

TravelRec.

I think, that nuendo is the problem. Try to route the MIDI signals from your keyboard directly via MIDI-OX to one of the kX-Synths and check then for latency in sound playback. I believe, there will be no noticeable latency. This works even on my 210Mhz Pentium without any problems.

orogenicman

Hello Crileo. The latency problem likely stems from the fact that you are using a USB connection, which uses up a lot of your CPU's processing time. I don't know what you can do about this in inuendo, but what you can do if you are using Sonar is to record your MIDI track using a general MIDI instrument, then set up an audio track for your software synthesizer, and assign your MIDI track to play that instrument. That way, the playback for that MIDI track will be playing the software synthesizer. Then if you want to record the audio for that MIDI track that you just sequenced in general MIDI, go to the edit menu, choose the "select" option, and click on "nothing". Then go back to the edit menu, select "bounce to tracks", and that will automatically (silently) record your MIDI track using the software synthisizer.

Maddogg6

This is curious, I have used Midiman USB 2x2 - and seen good performance... I wonder if plugging it into a HUB, versus directly into the PC can have some effect... ?? (just wondering, for my own curiosity)

crileo

Thanks to you all for your help. In effect using directly kx synth or vst instruments I noticed a great improvement of performance, so I've had the doubt that the cause could be ,as Orogenicman has said, for too many processes running on my CPU.
So I tried to close some process less important, wiping away needless voices from the start and now I'm able to record also midi track without appreciable latency.
I've also had to modify PCI latency tool, setting 32 for USB and 248 for Sound card increasing performance giving more priority to those devices (as I've read in an article found with Google). When I want to record some midi track I have to be sure not to have too much processes and programs running on.

TravelRec.

Switch the main processor usage to background tasks and see if it helps.

octave

The Cakewalk's Chief Tech. Officer says: "I don't recommend this. Setting the sheduling to background for "better performance" with drivers is a myth." See his long post: XP services that can be safely turned off
The OP here actually has a problem with an AV in the background.

I haven't experimented much myself, but it seems to me it's usually one or two rogue devices/drivers that are the problem (Wi-Fi adapters are often being found to be the culprit). Here, the biggest difference was made by disabling the Secondary Radeon display adapter (an X300 registers as two in Device Manager), a surprising suggestion I found on the Sound On Sound forum.

Maddogg6

*any* help is good if it means the difference between loosing a good performance - or not. So its not really just some psychological effect as the word 'myth' seems to infer.
How is a user supposed to fix a 'driver' problem?
Granted, updating is an option - as long as the update 'fixed' the problem. Or removing the device with the faulty driver (not alwasy an option). But what if its a problem with a mobo resource - I remember old VIA chipsets that this was a problem with DAW - a user is at their mercy and not everyone can just go out and buy new because of it.

Steinberg also recommends setting priority to background services.
He is using Nuendo, not Sonar btw

Processor scheduling: Important setting for ASIO on PC Windows :: Knowledge Base :: Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH

But even the MS article that was linked to from sonar forums...
The effectiveness of this is going to vary greatly - depending on system/circumstances.

If it works - it works, Again, the user may not be able to fix this fundemental problem if it stems from some system driver (mobo resources, PCI bridge, or say a Wifi driver etc..)
Besides, I think his point was; "this is the most essential tweak of all, because ASIO drivers run as background services in Windows." - was not completely true - in the sense, its *not* the most important tweak - fixing a faulty driver is *the* most important - and would I agree - but the SOS article he refered to is written for 'users', not device driver programmers.

octave

Well this first bit is cut too short, actually it continues to summarize the point, which is that without some possibly nonexistent driver which employs a background service, and mysterious "masking", it looks like the only possibilities would be either nothing or a potential aggravation.