Can I get lower latency on my midi controller
Im getting probably something like 15-20ms latency on my Korg Nano controllers via usb using a powered hub. I’m just wondering if I can get less than that. Bluetooth wouldn’t be less than that would it?
Im on ios
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You can’t have better latency than that as far as I know.
Bluetooth has much more latency than physical midi.
Damn okay. Its close enough to not hate it but If I could chop 5ms off of it I don’t think I’d even notice it anymore.
would it be different if I used a Focusrite interface? Ive got one of those racks collecting dust.
Try Bluetooth anyway. 15-20ms sounds like a lot. Are you sure you haven't measured audio latency as well?
BT MIDI is much faster than BT audio btw, no comparison.
How many samples is Drambo's latency set at? The lower you set them the less the latency, at the cost of CPU. Set them as low as you can without getting buffer overruns (crackles) or UI unresponsiveness.
Remember, there are two sources of latency, from the controller to the device (midi delay) and time to process the audio back out. Midi latency is generally negligible, especially over USB. I really doubt that is your issue. So that leaves audio latency, which is mainly governed by number of buffers, but can also vary between interfaces (though not by much).
Also ... sorry ... I know it's probably a silly question to ask, but has to be asked anyway. You're not trying to use Bluetooth audio are you? There's no way to get workable latency using bluetooth audio with current technology.
I just noticed the mention of the hub. It's unlikely, but some hubs can introduce latency. That should be easy enough to test by eliminating the hub. I doubt that's the issue though.
That's a good point.
I've had latency when using a third party usb to lightning adapter.
Are you using any compressors or pitch shifters? Those have a tendency to add quite a bit of unreported latency. I had to get rid of all the toneboosters multi band compressors/limiters from my set up because they were messing with my playing. Now I just have a single compressor module on the master.
Im not sure, Im just going by when I press the button how long till I hear the sound and it’s definitely somewhere in that range.
No bluetooth audio. Drambos buffer is set to 128.
im gonna try bluetooth midi and also bypass the hub and see if either of those help.
no but I am using a stupid amount of Cv quantizers.
Are you offsetting the audio that you’re listening to from dRambo to the midi?
I just noticed my nanokey2 is getting lower latency than my nanopad2. Can’t get them to do the bluetooth thing till I update their firmware. Maybe the firmware update will fix it by itself.
eliminating the hub didn’t seem to help.
No, how is that done?
Ah, sorry @gravitas i thought you were replying to me!
Im not sure what you mean by this.
that was meant for gravitas
Christ my POS laptop is lagging so hard on the most basic task.
@supadom @Johnisfaster
Scenario 1.
Listening to the audio generated from dRambo alongside sound generated by external midi.
External midi always has lag so the audio from dRambo is going to be ahead straight out of the box.
Add a small offset to the Master out of dRambo to sync with the midi being generated.
You can use Apple’s Sample Delay to create the necessary offset or this preset that I made.
The 256/512/1024 settings circled on the right in the screenshot are the values I need for my rig.
The values are also consistent so once put in place there’s no need to change them.
I don’t really have a problem getting things to line up, whats bothering me is that I can sense the delay when Im playing on the pads.
I think I may have just concluded that my speaker is adding a delay even when wired directly. Its a bluetooth Bose speaker but I was wiring it direct. It seems to have some kind of noise gate on its input, if nothing is playing and I play a single impulse it doesn’t make a sound.
That would also do it.
Thanks for the explanation @gravitas may find it useful one day if I get more hardware.
@Johnisfaster one way of finding out if it is your speaker or not is simply trying a pair of headphones plugged directly into your audio interface of iPad if you aren’t using an interface.
@supadom no worries.
I tracked down some headphones. Seems better. Im pretty sure its the speaker. To my ears it seems like about a 10ms difference. I never considered a speakers aux input could have a latency. Thats a bummer I really dig the sound of it for my mobile rig.
I added a pic of the mobile rig below just for kicks. Attached everything with this ridiculously strong velcro. Its a fun setup. The speaker felt like a part of the instrument.
Yes the speaker was previously wired. I unplugged it during the trouble shooting process.
Yes, most Bluetooth capable speakers introduce significant latency even when wired directly.
Shit. Now I have to figure out which battery powered one has the lowest latency that I can afford.
I'm afraid you might have to try different speakers yourself unless you're willing to get one of the models tested under the links @number37 posted. You might be lucky with small studio monitors.
Modern small active speakers often use DSP for EQ correction and battery power somewhat asks for low (energy efficient) DSP power resulting in audible latency.
I ended up getting a Soundcore Motion+. Super low latency (one post said <1ms) and sounds good. I don’t like that it has a noise gate on the input but so did the Bose I was using and I found a way to keep the gate open anyway.