Ableton really needs a latency compensation analysis and correction tool. For a project, you should be able to define midi port/channel paired with audio input channel. Then the tool should just run a test on its own and provide latency correction. It knows what it's sending and receiving, it knows expected vs actual, and the difference is error. Error can be compensated. I don't know why this is still a manual process.
When your using elektron gear with overbridge is Like you are mentioning. An automàtic latency correction. But i think It works better with t'he Mk2 series that improves t'he USB perdormance
I'm here because I have latency in recording external instruments in Ableton Live also. However I never get this issue in Logic Pro when recording an instrument as Logic has an Auto compensate tick box that does all the magic for you.
Hi Ricky, I apologize if this was already mentioned, i didn't take the time to read all comments. I'm watching your video, and, in the first part, you adjust the Driver Error Compensation to re-align your Pro 3 track. Driver Error Compensation is to adjust the latency of your audio interface and is only necessary if for any reason the audio interface reports a latency that's not exact. There is a Hardware Latency compensation setting in the External Instrument itself, and this is to account for latency inherent to an instrument. Hardware instruments, cable length and whatnot introduce their own latency, and the correct way, if I may, is to set your Driver Error Compensation as you did previously, and then to set the right Hardware Latency for your specific instrument in the External Instrument device, then save a preset for it. That's a reason why the External Instrument method may be more accurate than separate MIDI and Audio track (with monitoring OFF): because if your different hardware has various own latencies, you can compensate for them. Then, Freeze and Flatten the External Instrument track is indeed useful to detect the latency that your hardware introduces, but once set in the External Instrument, it is not necessary to do all the time. I mention that because the way it is phrased in the video may be understood like "if you don't freeze and flatten, your instrument will be off". In fact, the External Instrument works well without freezing and flattening, provided that the right Hardware latency is set. The method of using a MIDI track to send MIDI to the hardware instrument, and an Audio track with monitoring IN, and then set the right track delay in the MIDI track works well indeed, and it equivalent to using the External Instrument method. The External Instrument has been created for this reason, to avoid having to create two tracks - which may be preferred for any workflow reasons. Hope that helps, and that I am not crossing a line. Thanks for your work, I appreciate your videos!
Great discussion! Some thoughts: 1. The External Instrument plugin is for live playing, otherwise there is really no reason to use it. For studio work, I use paired midi and audio tracks like Ricky mentions. 2. Driver Error Compensation in the preferences menu only affects the direct monitoring loop on the audio interface, so it should only affect the timing when you are playing midi in. And every time I have done the test, it has been less that 1 ms off, so I've concluded this is not a major source of delay on my Scarlett interface. 3. When you are sending midi to your gear and sending audio back, the best way I've found to correct for latency is to use the track delay (and make sure monitoring on the audio track is off). Record some quarter notes just like RIcky does, and if they are 9 ms late, set the track delay of the midi track to -9 ms.
@@practice4089 In fact, it is the opposite. The external instrument device uses negative pre-delay, which absolutely makes zero sense for a live signal source (or are you trying to invent a millisecond scale time machine that makes MIDI events happen before you play them?)
Just a heads up for those of you recording live instruments or vocals also.. simply monitoring through your actual interface and recording with monitoring off in Ableton is a very fast and effective work around to eliminate latency in your recordings.
Yeah I've been researching this because I'm starting a new project with an old friend that is going to incorporate a TON of outboard gear into Live, and he was worried about latency. My guy we're gonna do what I do all the time and just Direct Monitor and get the mix from stage monitors 🤷
i sing on something I made with vst's or samples on Ableton then playback and my recorded voice is late. Never happened before, now a big issue because I have to correct manually every take. Will try your solution thanks
A one-bar loop becomes a two-bar loop to account for delay/reverb tails and things like that. The first bar starts from silence while the second bar includes the tail form the first. The idea is creating a clip that starts from the first bar and loops the second.
One litte suggestion to perfect everything even more.... You just covered a subject I've been dealing and messing around with for a while now since I started intergrating hardware into my Ableton workflow. You aaalmost hit the spot here but I want to give you an suggestion/advice to finish it off and make it perfect and easier to setup. 1. On the audio monitoring track where you have set the "Audio from" setting to "Ext. in 15/16". Turn that off, set that to "No input". 2. Now drop the "Ext. Audio Effect" device on that same track. In the device select "15/16" under the "Audio From" section. leave "Audio to" on No output. 3. Click on the options button in the top of the Ableton screen and make sure "Delay compensation" is turned on. Also turn of any delay amount you just set up on the midi sending track. The -11 delay. 4. Now make a new Audio track, this will be the track where you record and monitor the audio. 5. Go back to the track where you just dropped the Ext. Audio Effect device. On that track open the "Audio To" dropdown and select the track you just made in step 4. 6. Press play and be amazed! The audio coming into your recording track is spot on the grid (if you setup the driver error compensation right). The audio coming into the Ext. Audio Effect device will be compensated by Ableton automatically because it recognizes it as a plugin. You dont have to adjust any track delays anymore nothing. The driver error compensation is the only setting you have to adjust to get those last little perfection and thats it!! The only downside of this method is that you now have 3 tracks in Ableton for one instrument coming in. 1 The track that sends the midi, 2 the track that receives the audio and 3 the track that you use to monitor, record, process etc. I just have the 3 tracks grouped together to organize it and make it neat. Sorry for the long post but I hope you will try this out. Pls let me know how this worked out.
thats hell of the best advice he should do and should present .. ad thats he not show some Tips like yours make me me feel sad....glad you help people out.... even they dont understand the flux latency problem of digital AD DA , driver problems and DAW handling....
Didn't work for me. This might work if you don't actually have external latency. My Minimoog, as far as I can tell, has 19 ms to turn midi into audio so it is a good candidate to test these things.This is a kind of latency that Ableton CAN NOT KNOW about unless it is set somewhere. I have spent the last three days digging deep into my midi setup and latency issues. Here is what works for me: Either set the external hardware latency in the track delay as described above, or set it in the external instrument plugin. The latter has the benefit that you only need two tracks. So either three tracks: * midi send track: set track delay!, midi to external instrument * monitor track: set "Monitor" to "In", "Audio from" my external instrument * record track: "Monitor" to "off", "Audio from" my external instrument Or the two track solution: * external instrument, set "MIDI to" your external instrument, set "audio from" your external instrument, set HW latency, set track "Audio to" to your record track * record track, set Monitor to "auto" In both cases, turn on "Delay Compensation". "Reduced latency when monitoring" has no effect Now for the bonus tip for those that actually read this far - in the Ableton Midi preferences, do not turn on "Sync" for that external instrument midi output or you will spend three days in latency hell trying to figure out why any of the above doesn't work.
I went through all of this years ago to the point that I gave up on sequencing external instruments and just used software instruments in Ableton. Later I got into eurorack and now what I do is sync my beatstep pro with Ableton as the master clock and sync my elektron machinedrum to the beatstep pro through midi. Nothing kills creativity like having to solve timing issues.
I went through this hell and just said screw it and record my stuff into the MPC live now and dump the stems into the DAW. Before I did that, I went ERM into MPC4k and the 4k sequenced my hardware. Super tight, no latency. I did monitor off in Ableton like you did and just used my software mixer to hear WTF I was doing. The other thing I did was have 0 plugins running in Ableton besides the ERM one. Downsides were I couldn't really process sounds in the DAW until I printed all the tracks from my MPC, but it still worked. The 4000 is awesome for this workflow, the new MPC lives not so much. But since they export to stems I just basically go DAWless until it's time to drop the track into Ableton and further arrange/mix. I love this workflow a lot though. Anyway, nice to see someone else has gone through this madness. It's just tough to get that latency setting consistent in Ableton from session to session so I just gave up trying, lol.
the real amazing thing is how calm you are about all this. ive been on protools since forever and started working on ableton cause of an artist i'm working with and im pulling my hair out...what a buzz kill. latency? really? i have to calculate latency and were in 2022? hilarious.
Love the idea of Ableton's session view and all, but it is plain crazy they haven´t fixed this issue yet. It works great if you only use software instruments and program every thing but they have to hire at least one person who is a musician and try to record something so they notice how inconvenient the process is. Yes you can duplicate tracks and jump hoops but that is just bad design
I think Ableton are actually a bunch of musicians themselves, so I suspect fixing this huge problem is more complicated than we think. I really hope they can fix it cuz I love Ableton other than this nonsense.
Such a great topic ! I spent a lifetime to dealing with those latency problems and come to the same conclusions, but the brilliant bit is you sharing your experience with the community!
💯. Latency issues w/ Live caused me so much anger and frustration trying to learn/use Live as a beginner. This shared experience/knowledge is very helpful
If you like hearing the effects you have on your track when recording. You can duplicate the track, put one channel monitor OFF and the other on AUTO. Hold shift and hit record on both channels(You can just delete the AUTO recording after because its delayed). Now you should have one channel thats recording with no latency and the other track where you can hear realtime what your audio sounds like with the rest of your project.
@@LaWdHaveMercy4 Yes. Depends If you are using an audio interface. Usually they have a direct monitor setting (I believe most of them do). So you can listen to what you are playing to while recording. If that's not the case, then I suggest using the tip I wrote initally.
I've been trying to fix my latency issues for the past couple of days with no real luck. This video solved it for me in 30 mins. Thanks man I owe you one. 💙
Great video Ricky. I love Ableton Live, and have no desire to switch DAW… but seriously, how is this still such a mess in Live - it’s kind of crazy that we have to jump through all these hoops for low latency. It’s a fundamental requirement of a DAW. It should be an automated process - detect latency for an input, and automatically apply any necessary compensation! No more flaming hoops!
Agree..but its not Just Ableton..every DAW I've tried is riddled with lag.. its ridiculous they ask so much money for these sloppily written pieces of software 🙄
Finally! I've been struggling with early audio from my Digitakt, and I just couldn't find a solid answer. So much so that I had abandoned audio inputs all together and switched to Overbridge. Seeing the "early audio" in your video set me on the right track to finding the answer. Needed to adjust delay on the clock! Thanks!
I’ve been going through a similar journey recently and settled on a hybrid solution. Not using external instrument means that adding plugins to other tracks can cause the recording audio track to go off with each plugin added. Conclusion was to use external instrument and get it compensated properly, but instead of flattening, I record to a separate audio track from the external instrument track (by setting the input on the audio track to the other track). Seems to be the most reliable option I’ve found so far.
same here, adding NDLR with a bunch of analog synths and Elektron AR mk2 made a huge mess to midi and audio timing and only way I menaged to resolve it was with external instruments without input monitoring and recording to another audio channel…
I recently added some hardware to my setup (a Behringer TD-3 and Korg Minilogue) and have spent weeks tearing my hair out trying to resolve latency issues in Ableton. I must have watched nearly every video on TH-cam… but this was the one that finally sorted it. Thank you so much! I’m now recording both MIDI and audio back absolutely bang on the transients. Thanks again for the sterling walkthrough.
I’ve been using Live for 15 years and I still can’t get it right. I use external instrument hardware delay and the midi clock offset in the preferences. Is it still working for you? For me it seems to be bang on for a bit and then like outta nowhere I record and it’s early or late and just completely fucking annoyingly off! I’d love to hear your method if it’s still working for ya because I’m losing it, once again (happens every few months or so lol)
@@BIG_PASTA Funnily enough, it did conk out randomly. I think I fixed it by removing all the channel delays, redoing the settings about global latency in the master settings menu and having all my external instruments set at 17ms. Solid and perfect since.
Highly recommend looking into time aligning plug ins as well. Mauto-align and the sound radix auto-align. Not only is the audio having latency an issue, it's also their phase and track delay is a big tool for that. Especially if you really hate editing audio tracks.
Thank you for your explanation. Still, it would be worth mentioning, that this works like that for your Pro-3. If you would use other gear as well, it has to be corrected for every external instrument individually as a sum of your "system latency" (driver and interface latency) and your external instrument's MIDI latency. This latency is unfortunately not necessarily constant, but can be dependent of voice and controller usage (especially in older gear) and could then again be messed up by random MIDI jitter (in some gear in the range of 20 ms or so). So, it makes sense to have in mind, that solving this problem for a single voice on a MIDI-wise fast and consistent Pro-3 does not do the job when sending let's say 30 voices to a sluggish Roland D-70 or an Akai S-2000, making your example then look like an "artificial lab situation".
this video sent me recalibrating my ableton latency compensation settings after a night out at a bar and ended with me sitting in front of my computer meticulously matching waveforms until 2:40 am . ...now i can rest easy! Thanks Ricky 10/10 no srly peace and good night( :) ))
Be mindful with device-side latency as well. Things like bundling multiple channels of notes and automation on the same physical port can flood gear, especially older gear. It'll turn into dynamic latency based on how much data a device is supposed to ignore.
Hey Ricky, great video and love your channel. I found the 'least annoying' method without breaking the creativity flow is 1) Add a midi track and drag your pre-configured External Instrument preset to that track and start creating right away, 2) Place an audio track next to it and set 'Audio From' to the External Instrument track and 'Monitor' to Off. That way even if you want to monitor your External Instrument with reverb, delay, insert effects, while writing a tune, it's still good to record it dry on the audio track that's set to 'Off' plus you won't have Delay Compensation headaches. Once bounced, the dry track is ready for mixing, plus you could optionally drag-and-drop any insert effects from the External Instrument to the bounced audio track if the goal is to mix in Ableton. This method avoids messing with Driver Error settings, changing the 'D' delay settings, Flattening and Freezing, or any other manual tweaks that would have to be changed again if you change your project's Sample Rate (ie. 44.1k > 48k or 96k, or changing audio buffer settings). Following this method with 128 buffer / 48k I had less the 1ms of latency in the bounced audio track waveform from where the beat hits and the waveform starts. This is kind of a one-size-fits-all approach with minimal tracks or setting changes. Even better is group the Midi External Instrument track and Audio track and drag it to your User Library for repeatable use in projects.
Humans can easily detect half a millisecond which is btw, the time it takes for our brains to determine in the stereo field whether a sound is closer to your left or right ear. That aside, it sounds as if this may be the perfect solution and I'll give it a try.
I'm a multiclock user and worked through those details and don't need the multiclock anymore only if i feel i want to reduce jitter if there is any. to make it short: it all depends where you monitor while recording. 1) when you monitor while recording in the daw: always use external instrument device and record to a audio track feed by this chain (not by the direct input of your sound card). use monitor setting "in" or "auto" on the audio track in this usecase. 2) when you monitor external (eg.: dsp mixer on your audio interface before going into the audio driver or also classic to monitor on external mixing desk bypassing the computer) use - classic midi track sending midi notes out - record to audio track feed by soundcard input with ableton track monitor setting "off", by that the audio is placed correctly. if you choose monitor setting "in" or "auto" its not placed correct in this usecase. For the usecase that you monitor your external Instruments in Ableton while recording - What works always is to use the external instrument modul from ableton. Record audio always to a track wich is feed by the output of the external instrument track (for both use cases: midi note sending from ableton and also clocking a external sequencer as your elektron device). the added benefit with this setup ist also, that you can decide if you want to record directly dry after the external instrument device or print also allready some audio fx applied to it on the hardware instrument track while recording the this feed to the new audio track. also this setup still works with changing added latency by other plugins. If you want to emulate the two track classic midi track / audio track setup (and monitoring while recording on the audio track), keep the hw instrument track as it is, just mute the channel out to mixer. setup the audio track where you record to capture the feed directly post hw instrument device and monitor on this track. you can monitor also with fx. in this case the fx is not printed. The only thing to know is that a globally optimized midi clock offset setting per midi port is only optimized for one driver buffer size. when you change your project driver buffer size you might need to tune your clock settings again. Bitwig 4.0 is in this regard better and handling this for you. In Bitwig same workflow when you monitor your instruments while recording in the daw: always use the hardware/external instrument device and record this audio feed.
If I follow correctly, this is all only necessary if you need to monitor digitally, otherwise you can just record directly from the interface input and set the monitor to off and listen with direct monitoring. You can even listen to effects by creating an additional audio track with the same input, monitor set to “in” and its output set to “sends only” and sending it to reverbs and whatever. I guess I’m just not sure why you need to monitor digitally, even with your well-thought out solutions the latency sucks.
Oh my god.... thank you! The MIDI latency is the thing that actually solved it for me with my SSL 2+ and TD-3. It was MIDI latency, not audio latency that I was experiencing. I was losing my mind because none of the latency adjustments seemed to work, and using them only made things worse. I also did not notice there is a built-in project for finding latency.
If an instument is played manually and through Ableton, you play with the lagged Sound and the Latency will be compansated by brain (!) Thats the reason why ableton doesn't compensate while monitoring is on. imho correct behavior as long there is no 'im a Robot' switch
Turns out, I was most of the way there (with separate MIDI and Audio tracks) but I was debugging by playing both my Ableton output and my Mixer output simultaneously out of the monitor controller and trying to essentially get them in sync.. Thankfully, it seems that I can just turn monitoring with Ableton *off and rest easy knowing that my recording is in time while I can still hear it played through the mixer! (I have it patched into Ableton from the mixer) Thank you for taking the time to make these discoveries 🙏
I think that you are overthinking this. I can't say I've ever messed with driver error compensation or track delay with much success. I didn't know about the tutorial before, so I'll probably check that out, but I'm not sure it's necessary. Really, I think the big takeaway here is recording audio to an unmonitored track. Since I realised this was best practice, I've never had any issues with latency in ableton. Monitored audio in Ableton is usually pretty good if you have 'reduced latency when monitoring' switched on, and recording to unmonitored audio tracks just seems to capture it with the necessary compensation built in. My basic Live template has all my input channels, audio or midi, in a group with all tracks set to in. I have another group that receives (and records) all the audio from those tracks and is set to off. It works!
From Ableton.....DEC is only applied if the monitor on the recording track is set to "Off". If monitoring AND recording on a track where the monitor is set to "In" or "Auto", then DEC has no effect. It is overly complicated in Live, I think logic handles this much better
This is a rabbithole and just when you think you've solved it, it turns out all your synths take different amount of time to actually play a note after receiving one. Ouch. Also can I just say thanks for all the great videos and thanks for not bugging me to click like and subscribe before every video...that's so rare these days and the kind of thing that will make me click like and subscribe.
Awesome video dude. Made me laugh when you said ".... so dramatic when people are left to fend for themselves.." But that's pretty much what it is. I so frequently just accidentally come upon new revelations when searching for information about something else. Like this video - I hadn't a clue there was a drop down menu in MIDI Ports. Ffs. Thanks a ton. (I also appreciate the honesty of this being a single take video instead of some goofy chopped up editing.)
That little wizard thing in Ableton with the analog I/O loopback + the global delay compensation + the individual track delay compensation settings + turning off software input monitoring was the closest I got to ideal but then I had issues with recording a Volca sample that was receiving MIDI events with weird sub-measure drifting... but I had it basically perfect with a more expensive hardware device Excellent video, not "fun" but really useful, and practical advice People can get butthurt about musicians investigating this sort of thing and picking apart workflows, but IMO music software and hardware is one area where UX is crucial because fucking around with fiddly stuff like this is the exact opposite of focusing on intuition-based skills like making music.
THANNNK YOU for doing your own deep dive into this. I went nuts a few months ago researching this problem and my conclusion was that i had made a mistake in purchasing Ableton Suite if my focus was mainly external synths via midi. (the 2nd biggest problem with Ableton midi integration is no midi CC recorded straight to arrangement view, it can only be stored inside clips) There is one additional factor to all of this that i discovered with testing/youtube research, i am curious what you think and if you can confirm this phenomena: regarding the midi output clock sync delay settings (inside the preferences menu). It seems like as you add VSTs / other tracks / etc to your project and the computation latency grows - the midi out clock delay values do not adjust!! meaning as the project grows you need to keep going back and fiddling with the sync delay to keep things lined up - MAJOR ANNOYANCE!! Again, thanks for making the video - Ableton needs to be called out on this as much as possible - i found forum posts as far back as 2004 complaining about these issues.
Thanks for the detailed explanation You specified the differences between Midi and Audio delays and how to fix. Im happy I didn't have to watch 20 different videos to learn this fact. I got it all here in clarity.
Just did the latency compensation setup in Ableton Live 9, RME must have it right on the button as 0 compensation was required! Got a perfect mirror image! Been going through things to get my Multiclock behaving as expected, I’m getting there!
I was headscratching over this a little, I use a Roland StudioCapture and same thing, zero driver error compensation is needed. I've sorted all my latency issues, but this threw a curveball at me for a while. Looking at something I didn't need too lol. The multiclock is a godsend for any external sequencer integration & timed rhythmic lfo stuff :D
Ricky Tinez - Thanks a million for this. I am curious if anyone at Ableton in Berlin has reached out to you and commented on this and said "there is a simpler way to do this." Not that there is OR that your solutions aren't enormously appreciated. Just curious as this is a helluva a problem we've all run into. (I don't like freeze and flatten, either.)
Thanks Ricky, I opened up TH-cam just now intending to search for this topic, and your video was first on my home page. This issue has been driving me crazy, much appreciated!
Ableton records a 2 bar loop so it can loop the last bar , if you have an insert effect with a tail, like delay or reverb , you will loop from effect recorded (I.e. mid bar) rather than the start where the effect won’t be as apparent because it’s only just starting to react. Thus you won’t loop from the dry beginning. I never used to use freeze and had always made loops like this anyway, normally 16 bars with an 8 bar loop in the last 8 bars, until I realise freeze automated this process affectively.
I think buying Ableton has been the biggest mistake I've made while making music so far. For 3 years I haven't been able to record any vocals or guitars through my interface so now I go and buy a 4th gen Scarlet and its only 2 ms better so I'm really wishing I spent that money on a different DAW instead. My friend uses Logic and just pushes one button and has basically no latency with his whole vocal chain on. I've spent close to 40 hours probably trying to fix it and nothing works. This fix is still a mess that will take another half a day figuring out. I have a new MacBook pro and a new interface and still can't record anything cause Ableton can't figure it out. Ableton is garbage. Good video though, it looks like this might be the answer after 30 videos of searching over the last 3 years while frustrated. Focusrite support hasn't even been able to help
The problem with adjusting latency compensation, If you keep making a big project, that latency value can change. Per track! So u always have this push pull of getting it down. Also, ableton, please make ableton more user friendly for bouncing audio. Anyways, Welcome to the wonderful world of hardware 🤗 And yeah dude, u nailed it in the end. If u are just mixing, and u have ur finished track. Just send midi from it then use a seperate audio bus(make sure u have monitor on or u wont hear it)
Thank you for nerding out and getting to the bottom of this. One less thing to make my head hurt dealing with midi and track routing when I just wanna make beats
I recommend the video from Seed to Stage called "How to Record Midi Synths Without Latency in Ableton Live: External Instrument". He uses External Instrument and it's actually a lot easier with absolutely no latency. Basically External Instrument is doing all the heavy lifting and even lets you adjust the hardware latency that ableton is unable to calculate (each synth has a different one so Ableton cannot know in advance)
I’ve struggled with this so much. People are always like “why do you also use Pro Tools?” And I then point out to all the stuff in Live that haven’t matured yet like delay compensation issues. Despite it being synth based it is awful with external synths
Thank you Ricky! This video was really clarifying and validating because I coincidentally went through a similar journey a few months ago when connecting my Novation Circuit to control Serum in Ableton. I didn’t know the difference between track delays, the clock settings, etc.
Bit off topic, but can we all just take moment to appreciate mr Tinez’s lighting skills? I mean, there are some film noir type ratios in this vid!! Are you still on blackmagic Ricky? And you’re lit only by practicals? No wee little aputure softbox hiding outside the frame?
I feel like dealing with workarounds is my creativity-killer atm. I already own a push controller to activate one instrument after another and be able to play stuff in at once, but either I have latency in my recordings or I need to take several steps (change midi channel for another instrument, solo monitor the new audio track etc.) and break the workflow with it. Think I'll give your "not freeze and flatten" option yet another go, and see if I can improve on that.
Hi Ricky, thanks for this info mate, I’ve been battling this for ages, surely Ableton could have a template that everyone could just load and Live could ‘listen to’ and adjust all ins and outs to as near to zero latency that the computer will allow. Cheers Glyn.
The only reason I think they haven't done this is (though - they should!) is the potential for unlucky, hardware/software/OS combinations for which a template still...would not work. I say this as I suffered another enormous problem with Live and though they did work hard to try and fix it, they gave up. 'Their' hardware could not reproduce it. Unlucky me.
Two tracks + delay compensation is the way. Tried External Instrument and Freezing and thank god I figured out how to avoid the BS they introduce to the workflow. I also have my interface set to monitor everything directly. You can't put insert effects on anything live but I tend to use built-in effects or sends 99% of the time and would rather have zero minimum latency when performing.
Logic Pro handles latency much better than my copy of Ableton Live in my experience. Logic can also handle a lot more at 128 Buffer Rate than Live too, making it better for input monitoring with fx and recording vocals.
The rule for monitoring and latency in a DAW is that you should record from the same place in the signal chain from which you are monitoring. If for example you want to record from your external instrument device rack you CANNOT record from your audio inputs because that is not where you are monitoring the signal. You need to tap the external instrument itself (post mixer) in the audio track channel and record that. Similarly, in your example of recording midi to an audio track you made a mistake by setting the monitoring to In. When you set your midi to the grid you are effectively not monitoring through Ableton, which is why the timing is off since Live then moves the audio back by the amount of system latency. That is what you are seeing. If you set it to Off and have the correct hardware latency set, the recorded audio will match the bounced audio from the external instrument device. Your description of what causes track delay is a bit off. Ableton knows about the system latency and you already adjusted for that (created by your audio interface). What it doesn't know is how much latency your midi device itself creates. Each one will be different (my guess is that yours is the additional 2ms of instrument latency you incorrectly added to the system latency). I usually compensate for this in the external instrument plugin itself, not the track delay which is better used to compensate for errors in plugin latency reporting. Lastly, you need to be careful measuring a single transient when setting hardware latency since this will not compensate for midi jitter, which you can better approximate by averaging many measurements.
I don't do a lot of external recording, but this video has been amazing, found ways to get 0 latency in, and the big one for me was that I don't need the external instrument plugin, I can send midi from one and get audio in on another track, that's the piece that I'm excited to learn today, thank you!
Maybe someone already mentioned but without using an External instrument plug-in, the latency keeps changing by inserting plug-ins and effects, so adjustments never end. External instrument plug-in will compensate for all internal latencies in Ableton. Fine-tuning can be done by "hardware latency" box. Also, allow a few milliseconds of jitter. Human is not sensitive to feeling 3ms.
Very useful video, thanks! Also there is “Reduced Latency When Monitoring” option in Ableton Live. It might be one more variable in this latency equation.
Pro tip: group your properly configured and labeled external instrument and audio track, and save that as a template. No more setting up routing for your instruments!
thanks for that vid... dealing with this issue since 30 years :-) not that bad nowadays :-)...but it even gets worse, when you start adding audioplugs when mixing aside composing (especially on the master bus)...so once you add two or three master effects, you cant play midi notes anymore (latency is sometimes even close to a second!). thats what i am missing in ableton. cubase has this nice little button: once you are already deep in your mix and want to add f.e. a solo.. just press that latency compensation button, all heavy plugs are turned off and are out of the signal chain... no latency, no problems... cubase also handles this latency thing way better than ableton. cubase auto latency compensation also has way less issues with that problem you described. so in general i love using ableton for basic idea finding and then switch to cubase for finalizing, adding sparkles and mixing. makes my life so much easier :-)
Great vid, I am a recovering hardware or die cat, I feel a relapse coming. I also went thru the reality of Aira stuff being locked at 96khz(System1m)...and after all that bs, I'm thinking, man, if I just plug into a hardware recorder and go, all this frustration goes buh bye. I'm not about to get all these weird superstitious micro-rituals, oh yer usin' da funkenheimer dz1000? make sure you plug in the midi cable backwards, wait, is it tuesday? Scratch that, it's audio cables backward on tuesday. ps the MX-1 can downsample all of those aira units to a user setting of 44.1/48/96, which seems a little...dastardly. (audio clip of 'I've got the poison, I've got the remedy') (angry cat face + audio clip of rage against the machine's 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me!') yeah...relapse...
This works a treat. Finally have my machinedrum, A4 and Norns all syncing with in DAW stuff on the fly. Only issue I’ve found is if I want to solo the audio I can’t. Same in a group or not. It kills the midi and therefore the play back. There is a solo grouping max plugin, but that changes the midi track to not having midi out control! Arghhhh sooooo close
Great video Ricky! Really important stuff. I also found this to be presented pretty engagingly for such dry subject matter. Your passion really shines through.
Thank you for this. I'm gonna try out what you did and see if it fixes the problem. I have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 as my interface and have this issue using my Roland Integra 7 with Roland A-49 midi controller. Ableton was of no support and like you mentioned in the video, they basically leave you to figure things out on your own. I don't like companies like that. I ended up buying a Tascam DP-03SD and have been using that to record my beats for my other youtube channel. Makes me feel like I wasted money on that Scarlett 18i20, I got the Included ableton 11 lite license and that's why they pretty much abandoned me. That didn't make me feel confident about their support and using their software.
I'm here because I have latency in recording external instruments in Ableton Live also. However I never get this issue in Logic Pro when recording an instrument as Logic has an Auto compensate tick box that does all the magic for you. Thanks for sharing the knowledge Ricky. ✌
This also works for tracking guitar or vocals for instance. You can have one track open to monitor the sound but don't record on that one record on another one with a monitoring is off and then scoot that waveform over
Same conclusion : monitoring trough UAD apollo (this way = latency free + i can play with those gorgeous plugins latency free too. Can be replaced by an external mixer or ...) + monitoring on OFF in Ableton + separate midi and audio track. + I can choose if i print or not the effects, and if not, load the same plugins on the dry audio track recorded in Ableton and tweak later. Works very well here :)
Thats what i've been doing as well, although im not sure what Im doing 😅However, now that I want to record my tracks from my hardware that I have sequenced on into ableton as midi, I am having latency issues and not sure how to go about it without doing the 2 tips from Ricky. Do you record midi in from harware to ableton and if so, does it lign up automatically?
@@AnalogFlava yes, I record midi from hardware synth, then replay the midi to the hardware for sound design, then print, all with no latency and in sync in ableton
Thanks brother! What I find so weird is that I never experience this when using logic, even for audio tracks. So why is this such a big deal for ableton?! Well i think the track delay is the most convenient solution. Great research, you truly are a geek 😄😉
Thanks bro, you saved my life. Tried to figure out on how to sync my Elektron devices for ages 👏 BTW where is that clock information video you are talking about? Still I am having a hard time with getting my Rytm and A4 playing along with my Octatrack and recording everything simultaneously into Ableton. Especially when I use Overbridge. I guess I would need to play around with the delay compensation of the Overbridge channels and the clock information of the Octatrack. If the Octatrack is sending the Master clock everything runs smoothly. But I can’t figure out on how to use my Octatrack together with the other Elektron devices and Overbridge. A4 + Rytm are tight on grid with Overbrige, but the Octatrack is always delayed somehow. Thanks 🙏
It doesn't look like look like you have made any adjustment in the external instrument plug-in for the internal latency of the synth itself. Once you have the driver comp set properly, you can adjust the hardware latency in the plug-in itself.
Ok good infos !but which is the best settings when using overbridge?for example... enable the clock +transport in overbridge and untick all midi ableton sync settings?or disable click transport at overbridge and tick the sync button in ableton midi settings and adjust the ms for latency?
I really like the way you convey information and the overall quality, thanks man! Would greatly appreciate if you can tell anything on optimising latency issues in live looping performances (multichannel), I'm aiming for a complex setup with audio, midi looping and resampling things like omnisphere
After recordings my samples, I just set the start marker to the right place. That does the trick too and no need to think like crazy on this topic :D cheers
Also, if you are using bluetooth headphones, you might want to plug some in instead. No clue why I didn't realize it but after I ran the midi audio into an audio track and found that it was in time, I realized, it must be something else. After smacking myself in the head, I plugged back in my real headphones.
I'm just gonna say it... I was waiting religiously for a Ricky Tinez sp404mkii video! Hopefully this is not about Roland not sending him one cos I'll start a riot
@@beefeeb I thought about that but I don't know... Ricky's super popular and it's not like he doesn't rave about synths and samplers outside of the novation family. I wouldn't be surprised if novation actually asked him not to review it in order not to stomp on the circuit rhythm.
FL Studio has no issue with such things. I'm just starting with AL and I can't believe I have to setup all milliseconds to all my hardware. Thanks for indepth analysis
i've wanted to solve this issue since 2004 or so and i still don't know how, but i did appreciate the video, and hope to solve it somehow someday. still think ableton should just fix this on their own end.
Could you not direct monitor from your interface so you’re hearing your interface latency free, then record in Ableton with the audio track set to off and a seperate midi track for control?
Fantastic video. Glad I found you. I have a problem though. This technique totally works, even timing two different Roland boutiques with different latencies, the problem is that it’s not constant; meaning that after I pause and hit play again it all drifts a little, and after adding more channels it changes again and I find that I need to re tweak the delay compensation. How can I solve this for a performance set up? Maybe someone can shed some light….
Great vid Ricky! Ive been battling with this issue for years. Ive tried a milion different timming values in order to get all my hardware in sync with software and all of my hardware sequencers at the same time. Im really wondering if your internal ableton effects are also dead on the money the way you have everything setup. Im almost certain that its slightly off and your not hearing it..try running a beat repeat with quarter notes on ableton push over an already playing clip in ableton also playing quarter notes. Are they playing in time? This is one of my biggest issues in ableton, because the rest is dead on the money nice and tight. Wish someone could make a maxforlive device to offset your internal clock used for effects. My workaround for this, using delay compensation to align the internal effects clock with the rest. But doing this obviously throws everything off the grid again. You just cant seem to get it all in ableton its give and take.
Rest of the world: 404 MK 2!!
Ricky: latency tho...
gwj
Underrated comment
low key i was also waiting for the ricky 404 mk2 breakdown lol
@@illiminal i think He didnt get one because he works for novation
Hahah good one!
It's 2021. This should be a painless "One Click" solution or operation.
There is. Presonus Studio One.
It's just a tick box in Logic Pro called auto compensate. Why Ableton doesn't have this is a mystery.
I'll tell you from future point of view, it's not
Hows that gonna work
@@JamesWilliam70 exactly
Ableton really needs a latency compensation analysis and correction tool. For a project, you should be able to define midi port/channel paired with audio input channel. Then the tool should just run a test on its own and provide latency correction. It knows what it's sending and receiving, it knows expected vs actual, and the difference is error. Error can be compensated. I don't know why this is still a manual process.
Agreed, like it is implemented in Bitwig or Studio One. Just let it make a test with zero attack and make all compensations it needs automagically.
Ableton 11 no less....
When your using elektron gear with overbridge is Like you are mentioning. An automàtic latency correction. But i think It works better with t'he Mk2 series that improves t'he USB perdormance
I'm here because I have latency in recording external instruments in Ableton Live also. However I never get this issue in Logic Pro when recording an instrument as Logic has an Auto compensate tick box that does all the magic for you.
you can no corect or predict what lays in the future...
only you build a fluxcompansator with 1.21 gigawatt..
Hi Ricky, I apologize if this was already mentioned, i didn't take the time to read all comments. I'm watching your video, and, in the first part, you adjust the Driver Error Compensation to re-align your Pro 3 track.
Driver Error Compensation is to adjust the latency of your audio interface and is only necessary if for any reason the audio interface reports a latency that's not exact.
There is a Hardware Latency compensation setting in the External Instrument itself, and this is to account for latency inherent to an instrument. Hardware instruments, cable length and whatnot introduce their own latency, and the correct way, if I may, is to set your Driver Error Compensation as you did previously, and then to set the right Hardware Latency for your specific instrument in the External Instrument device, then save a preset for it. That's a reason why the External Instrument method may be more accurate than separate MIDI and Audio track (with monitoring OFF): because if your different hardware has various own latencies, you can compensate for them.
Then, Freeze and Flatten the External Instrument track is indeed useful to detect the latency that your hardware introduces, but once set in the External Instrument, it is not necessary to do all the time. I mention that because the way it is phrased in the video may be understood like "if you don't freeze and flatten, your instrument will be off". In fact, the External Instrument works well without freezing and flattening, provided that the right Hardware latency is set.
The method of using a MIDI track to send MIDI to the hardware instrument, and an Audio track with monitoring IN, and then set the right track delay in the MIDI track works well indeed, and it equivalent to using the External Instrument method. The External Instrument has been created for this reason, to avoid having to create two tracks - which may be preferred for any workflow reasons.
Hope that helps, and that I am not crossing a line. Thanks for your work, I appreciate your videos!
Great discussion! Some thoughts:
1. The External Instrument plugin is for live playing, otherwise there is really no reason to use it. For studio work, I use paired midi and audio tracks like Ricky mentions.
2. Driver Error Compensation in the preferences menu only affects the direct monitoring loop on the audio interface, so it should only affect the timing when you are playing midi in. And every time I have done the test, it has been less that 1 ms off, so I've concluded this is not a major source of delay on my Scarlett interface.
3. When you are sending midi to your gear and sending audio back, the best way I've found to correct for latency is to use the track delay (and make sure monitoring on the audio track is off). Record some quarter notes just like RIcky does, and if they are 9 ms late, set the track delay of the midi track to -9 ms.
"1. The External Instrument plugin..." that's not what Ableton says
@@practice4089 In fact, it is the opposite. The external instrument device uses negative pre-delay, which absolutely makes zero sense for a live signal source (or are you trying to invent a millisecond scale time machine that makes MIDI events happen before you play them?)
Just a heads up for those of you recording live instruments or vocals also.. simply monitoring through your actual interface and recording with monitoring off in Ableton is a very fast and effective work around to eliminate latency in your recordings.
This should be No1
works out the box.
Always surprised it's hardly ever mentioned.
Yeah I've been researching this because I'm starting a new project with an old friend that is going to incorporate a TON of outboard gear into Live, and he was worried about latency. My guy we're gonna do what I do all the time and just Direct Monitor and get the mix from stage monitors 🤷
i sing on something I made with vst's or samples on Ableton then playback and my recorded voice is late. Never happened before, now a big issue because I have to correct manually every take. Will try your solution thanks
You still need to test for driver latency compensation.
This is how I do it but it SUCKS for vocals. Especially when you rely on autotube cause your goofy ass sounds like Young Thug unplugged
A one-bar loop becomes a two-bar loop to account for delay/reverb tails and things like that. The first bar starts from silence while the second bar includes the tail form the first. The idea is creating a clip that starts from the first bar and loops the second.
hope he read this on day...
One litte suggestion to perfect everything even more....
You just covered a subject I've been dealing and messing around with for a while now since I started intergrating hardware into my Ableton workflow. You aaalmost hit the spot here but I want to give you an suggestion/advice to finish it off and make it perfect and easier to setup.
1. On the audio monitoring track where you have set the "Audio from" setting to "Ext. in 15/16". Turn that off, set that to "No input".
2. Now drop the "Ext. Audio Effect" device on that same track. In the device select "15/16" under the "Audio From" section. leave "Audio to" on No output.
3. Click on the options button in the top of the Ableton screen and make sure "Delay compensation" is turned on. Also turn of any delay amount you just set up on the midi sending track. The -11 delay.
4. Now make a new Audio track, this will be the track where you record and monitor the audio.
5. Go back to the track where you just dropped the Ext. Audio Effect device. On that track open the "Audio To" dropdown and select the track you just made in step 4.
6. Press play and be amazed! The audio coming into your recording track is spot on the grid (if you setup the driver error compensation right).
The audio coming into the Ext. Audio Effect device will be compensated by Ableton automatically because it recognizes it as a plugin. You dont have to adjust any track delays anymore nothing. The driver error compensation is the only setting you have to adjust to get those last little perfection and thats it!!
The only downside of this method is that you now have 3 tracks in Ableton for one instrument coming in. 1 The track that sends the midi, 2 the track that receives the audio and 3 the track that you use to monitor, record, process etc. I just have the 3 tracks grouped together to organize it and make it neat.
Sorry for the long post but I hope you will try this out. Pls let me know how this worked out.
thats hell of the best advice he should do and should present ..
ad thats he not show some Tips like yours make me me feel sad....glad you help people out....
even they dont understand the flux latency problem of digital AD DA , driver problems and DAW handling....
Didn't work for me. This might work if you don't actually have external latency.
My Minimoog, as far as I can tell, has 19 ms to turn midi into audio so it is a good candidate to test these things.This is a kind of latency that Ableton CAN NOT KNOW about unless it is set somewhere. I have spent the last three days digging deep into my midi setup and latency issues. Here is what works for me:
Either set the external hardware latency in the track delay as described above, or set it in the external instrument plugin. The latter has the benefit that you only need two tracks.
So either three tracks:
* midi send track: set track delay!, midi to external instrument
* monitor track: set "Monitor" to "In", "Audio from" my external instrument
* record track: "Monitor" to "off", "Audio from" my external instrument
Or the two track solution:
* external instrument, set "MIDI to" your external instrument, set "audio from" your external instrument, set HW latency, set track "Audio to" to your record track
* record track, set Monitor to "auto"
In both cases, turn on "Delay Compensation". "Reduced latency when monitoring" has no effect
Now for the bonus tip for those that actually read this far - in the Ableton Midi preferences, do not turn on "Sync" for that external instrument midi output or you will spend three days in latency hell trying to figure out why any of the above doesn't work.
I went through all of this years ago to the point that I gave up on sequencing external instruments and just used software instruments in Ableton. Later I got into eurorack and now what I do is sync my beatstep pro with Ableton as the master clock and sync my elektron machinedrum to the beatstep pro through midi. Nothing kills creativity like having to solve timing issues.
This is me right now!
I went through this hell and just said screw it and record my stuff into the MPC live now and dump the stems into the DAW. Before I did that, I went ERM into MPC4k and the 4k sequenced my hardware. Super tight, no latency. I did monitor off in Ableton like you did and just used my software mixer to hear WTF I was doing. The other thing I did was have 0 plugins running in Ableton besides the ERM one. Downsides were I couldn't really process sounds in the DAW until I printed all the tracks from my MPC, but it still worked. The 4000 is awesome for this workflow, the new MPC lives not so much. But since they export to stems I just basically go DAWless until it's time to drop the track into Ableton and further arrange/mix. I love this workflow a lot though. Anyway, nice to see someone else has gone through this madness. It's just tough to get that latency setting consistent in Ableton from session to session so I just gave up trying, lol.
So wierd lol. Its all good my side tbh
Im in auto mode, delay compensation on and reduced late cy when monitoring is off.
the real amazing thing is how calm you are about all this. ive been on protools since forever and started working on ableton cause of an artist i'm working with and im pulling my hair out...what a buzz kill. latency? really? i have to calculate latency and were in 2022? hilarious.
Yeh I absolutely love Ableton but this is sucks
Love the idea of Ableton's session view and all, but it is plain crazy they haven´t fixed this issue yet. It works great if you only use software instruments and program every thing but they have to hire at least one person who is a musician and try to record something so they notice how inconvenient the process is. Yes you can duplicate tracks and jump hoops but that is just bad design
I think Ableton are actually a bunch of musicians themselves, so I suspect fixing this huge problem is more complicated than we think. I really hope they can fix it cuz I love Ableton other than this nonsense.
Such a great topic ! I spent a lifetime to dealing with those latency problems and come to the same conclusions, but the brilliant bit is you sharing your experience with the community!
💯. Latency issues w/ Live caused me so much anger and frustration trying to learn/use Live as a beginner. This shared experience/knowledge is very helpful
If you like hearing the effects you have on your track when recording. You can duplicate the track, put one channel monitor OFF and the other on AUTO. Hold shift and hit record on both channels(You can just delete the AUTO recording after because its delayed). Now you should have one channel thats recording with no latency and the other track where you can hear realtime what your audio sounds like with the rest of your project.
This is the way I do it.. pain in the ass but it’s reliable. Ableton should be able to fix this so we don’t need duplicates track workarounds
@@TimGregory I do this too but then you hear stuff with latency or if you driver compensate you then record with latency. It kind of suckkkks
Can you record and hear what your recording at the same time?
@@LaWdHaveMercy4 Yes. Depends If you are using an audio interface. Usually they have a direct monitor setting (I believe most of them do). So you can listen to what you are playing to while recording. If that's not the case, then I suggest using the tip I wrote initally.
@TimGregory someone made a max4luve device to nudge the track after you record. Only works in arrangement view
I've been trying to fix my latency issues for the past couple of days with no real luck. This video solved it for me in 30 mins. Thanks man I owe you one. 💙
Great video Ricky. I love Ableton Live, and have no desire to switch DAW… but seriously, how is this still such a mess in Live - it’s kind of crazy that we have to jump through all these hoops for low latency. It’s a fundamental requirement of a DAW. It should be an automated process - detect latency for an input, and automatically apply any necessary compensation! No more flaming hoops!
Agree..but its not Just Ableton..every DAW I've tried is riddled with lag.. its ridiculous they ask so much money for these sloppily written pieces of software 🙄
Finally! I've been struggling with early audio from my Digitakt, and I just couldn't find a solid answer. So much so that I had abandoned audio inputs all together and switched to Overbridge. Seeing the "early audio" in your video set me on the right track to finding the answer. Needed to adjust delay on the clock! Thanks!
I’ve been going through a similar journey recently and settled on a hybrid solution. Not using external instrument means that adding plugins to other tracks can cause the recording audio track to go off with each plugin added. Conclusion was to use external instrument and get it compensated properly, but instead of flattening, I record to a separate audio track from the external instrument track (by setting the input on the audio track to the other track). Seems to be the most reliable option I’ve found so far.
same here, adding NDLR with a bunch of analog synths and Elektron AR mk2 made a huge mess to midi and audio timing and only way I menaged to resolve it was with external instruments without input monitoring and recording to another audio channel…
I recently added some hardware to my setup (a Behringer TD-3 and Korg Minilogue) and have spent weeks tearing my hair out trying to resolve latency issues in Ableton. I must have watched nearly every video on TH-cam… but this was the one that finally sorted it. Thank you so much! I’m now recording both MIDI and audio back absolutely bang on the transients. Thanks again for the sterling walkthrough.
I’ve been using Live for 15 years and I still can’t get it right. I use external instrument hardware delay and the midi clock offset in the preferences. Is it still working for you? For me it seems to be bang on for a bit and then like outta nowhere I record and it’s early or late and just completely fucking annoyingly off! I’d love to hear your method if it’s still working for ya because I’m losing it, once again (happens every few months or so lol)
@@BIG_PASTA Funnily enough, it did conk out randomly. I think I fixed it by removing all the channel delays, redoing the settings about global latency in the master settings menu and having all my external instruments set at 17ms. Solid and perfect since.
Highly recommend looking into time aligning plug ins as well. Mauto-align and the sound radix auto-align.
Not only is the audio having latency an issue, it's also their phase and track delay is a big tool for that.
Especially if you really hate editing audio tracks.
Thank you for your explanation. Still, it would be worth mentioning, that this works like that for your Pro-3. If you would use other gear as well, it has to be corrected for every external instrument individually as a sum of your "system latency" (driver and interface latency) and your external instrument's MIDI latency. This latency is unfortunately not necessarily constant, but can be dependent of voice and controller usage (especially in older gear) and could then again be messed up by random MIDI jitter (in some gear in the range of 20 ms or so). So, it makes sense to have in mind, that solving this problem for a single voice on a MIDI-wise fast and consistent Pro-3 does not do the job when sending let's say 30 voices to a sluggish Roland D-70 or an Akai S-2000, making your example then look like an "artificial lab situation".
this video sent me recalibrating my ableton latency compensation settings after a night out at a bar and ended with me sitting in front of my computer meticulously matching waveforms until 2:40 am . ...now i can rest easy! Thanks Ricky 10/10 no srly peace and good night( :) ))
Be mindful with device-side latency as well. Things like bundling multiple channels of notes and automation on the same physical port can flood gear, especially older gear. It'll turn into dynamic latency based on how much data a device is supposed to ignore.
Hey Ricky, great video and love your channel. I found the 'least annoying' method without breaking the creativity flow is 1) Add a midi track and drag your pre-configured External Instrument preset to that track and start creating right away, 2) Place an audio track next to it and set 'Audio From' to the External Instrument track and 'Monitor' to Off. That way even if you want to monitor your External Instrument with reverb, delay, insert effects, while writing a tune, it's still good to record it dry on the audio track that's set to 'Off' plus you won't have Delay Compensation headaches. Once bounced, the dry track is ready for mixing, plus you could optionally drag-and-drop any insert effects from the External Instrument to the bounced audio track if the goal is to mix in Ableton. This method avoids messing with Driver Error settings, changing the 'D' delay settings, Flattening and Freezing, or any other manual tweaks that would have to be changed again if you change your project's Sample Rate (ie. 44.1k > 48k or 96k, or changing audio buffer settings). Following this method with 128 buffer / 48k I had less the 1ms of latency in the bounced audio track waveform from where the beat hits and the waveform starts. This is kind of a one-size-fits-all approach with minimal tracks or setting changes. Even better is group the Midi External Instrument track and Audio track and drag it to your User Library for repeatable use in projects.
Humans can easily detect half a millisecond which is btw, the time it takes for our brains to determine in the stereo field whether a sound is closer to your left or right ear.
That aside, it sounds as if this may be the perfect solution and I'll give it a try.
I'm a multiclock user and worked through those details and don't need the multiclock anymore only if i feel i want to reduce jitter if there is any. to make it short: it all depends where you monitor while recording.
1) when you monitor while recording in the daw:
always use external instrument device and record to a audio track feed by this chain (not by the direct input of your sound card). use monitor setting "in" or "auto" on the audio track in this usecase.
2) when you monitor external (eg.: dsp mixer on your audio interface before going into the audio driver or also classic to monitor on external mixing desk bypassing the computer)
use
- classic midi track sending midi notes out
- record to audio track feed by soundcard input with ableton track monitor setting "off", by that the audio is placed correctly. if you choose monitor setting "in" or "auto" its not placed correct in this usecase.
For the usecase that you monitor your external Instruments in Ableton while recording - What works always is to use the external instrument modul from ableton. Record audio always to a track wich is feed by the output of the external instrument track (for both use cases: midi note sending from ableton and also clocking a external sequencer as your elektron device). the added benefit with this setup ist also, that you can decide if you want to record directly dry after the external instrument device or print also allready some audio fx applied to it on the hardware instrument track while recording the this feed to the new audio track. also this setup still works with changing added latency by other plugins.
If you want to emulate the two track classic midi track / audio track setup (and monitoring while recording on the audio track), keep the hw instrument track as it is, just mute the channel out to mixer. setup the audio track where you record to capture the feed directly post hw instrument device and monitor on this track. you can monitor also with fx. in this case the fx is not printed.
The only thing to know is that a globally optimized midi clock offset setting per midi port is only optimized for one driver buffer size. when you change your project driver buffer size you might need to tune your clock settings again. Bitwig 4.0 is in this regard better and handling this for you. In Bitwig same workflow when you monitor your instruments while recording in the daw: always use the hardware/external instrument device and record this audio feed.
If I follow correctly, this is all only necessary if you need to monitor digitally, otherwise you can just record directly from the interface input and set the monitor to off and listen with direct monitoring. You can even listen to effects by creating an additional audio track with the same input, monitor set to “in” and its output set to “sends only” and sending it to reverbs and whatever.
I guess I’m just not sure why you need to monitor digitally, even with your well-thought out solutions the latency sucks.
Might be one of the most important videos within the ableton community! Good job!
Oh my god.... thank you! The MIDI latency is the thing that actually solved it for me with my SSL 2+ and TD-3. It was MIDI latency, not audio latency that I was experiencing. I was losing my mind because none of the latency adjustments seemed to work, and using them only made things worse. I also did not notice there is a built-in project for finding latency.
If an instument is played manually and through Ableton,
you play with the lagged Sound and the Latency will be compansated by brain (!)
Thats the reason why ableton doesn't compensate while monitoring is on.
imho correct behavior as long there is no 'im a Robot' switch
Turns out, I was most of the way there (with separate MIDI and Audio tracks) but I was debugging by playing both my Ableton output and my Mixer output simultaneously out of the monitor controller and trying to essentially get them in sync..
Thankfully, it seems that I can just turn monitoring with Ableton *off and rest easy knowing that my recording is in time while I can still hear it played through the mixer! (I have it patched into Ableton from the mixer)
Thank you for taking the time to make these discoveries 🙏
I think that you are overthinking this. I can't say I've ever messed with driver error compensation or track delay with much success. I didn't know about the tutorial before, so I'll probably check that out, but I'm not sure it's necessary. Really, I think the big takeaway here is recording audio to an unmonitored track. Since I realised this was best practice, I've never had any issues with latency in ableton. Monitored audio in Ableton is usually pretty good if you have 'reduced latency when monitoring' switched on, and recording to unmonitored audio tracks just seems to capture it with the necessary compensation built in. My basic Live template has all my input channels, audio or midi, in a group with all tracks set to in. I have another group that receives (and records) all the audio from those tracks and is set to off. It works!
From Ableton.....DEC is only applied if the monitor on the recording track is set to "Off". If monitoring AND recording on a track where the monitor is set to "In" or "Auto", then DEC has no effect.
It is overly complicated in Live, I think logic handles this much better
Good find, I didn’t realize this
This is a rabbithole and just when you think you've solved it, it turns out all your synths take different amount of time to actually play a note after receiving one. Ouch.
Also can I just say thanks for all the great videos and thanks for not bugging me to click like and subscribe before every video...that's so rare these days and the kind of thing that will make me click like and subscribe.
Awesome video dude. Made me laugh when you said ".... so dramatic when people are left to fend for themselves.." But that's pretty much what it is. I so frequently just accidentally come upon new revelations when searching for information about something else. Like this video - I hadn't a clue there was a drop down menu in MIDI Ports. Ffs. Thanks a ton. (I also appreciate the honesty of this being a single take video instead of some goofy chopped up editing.)
That little wizard thing in Ableton with the analog I/O loopback + the global delay compensation + the individual track delay compensation settings + turning off software input monitoring was the closest I got to ideal but then I had issues with recording a Volca sample that was receiving MIDI events with weird sub-measure drifting... but I had it basically perfect with a more expensive hardware device
Excellent video, not "fun" but really useful, and practical advice
People can get butthurt about musicians investigating this sort of thing and picking apart workflows, but IMO music software and hardware is one area where UX is crucial because fucking around with fiddly stuff like this is the exact opposite of focusing on intuition-based skills like making music.
THANNNK YOU for doing your own deep dive into this. I went nuts a few months ago researching this problem and my conclusion was that i had made a mistake in purchasing Ableton Suite if my focus was mainly external synths via midi. (the 2nd biggest problem with Ableton midi integration is no midi CC recorded straight to arrangement view, it can only be stored inside clips)
There is one additional factor to all of this that i discovered with testing/youtube research, i am curious what you think and if you can confirm this phenomena: regarding the midi output clock sync delay settings (inside the preferences menu). It seems like as you add VSTs / other tracks / etc to your project and the computation latency grows - the midi out clock delay values do not adjust!! meaning as the project grows you need to keep going back and fiddling with the sync delay to keep things lined up - MAJOR ANNOYANCE!!
Again, thanks for making the video - Ableton needs to be called out on this as much as possible - i found forum posts as far back as 2004 complaining about these issues.
This Video > everything else that talks about ableton latency.
The 3rd solution is the ableton programmers making eliminating latency a focus of Ableton 12 development. It's the laggiest daw and it's not close.
Cubase is better
They have had 11 chances...no excuses.
@@dustyrhodes1655 what's a better alternative?
I’ve found Logic to be pretty good.
@@pavelmolchanov7156 I'm about to go back to cubase to give it a try its been about 20 years. Hope its worth it.
Thanks for the detailed explanation
You specified the differences between Midi and Audio delays and how to fix. Im happy I didn't have to watch 20 different videos to learn this fact. I got it all here in clarity.
Just did the latency compensation setup in Ableton Live 9, RME must have it right on the button as 0 compensation was required! Got a perfect mirror image! Been going through things to get my Multiclock behaving as expected, I’m getting there!
I was headscratching over this a little, I use a Roland StudioCapture and same thing, zero driver error compensation is needed. I've sorted all my latency issues, but this threw a curveball at me for a while. Looking at something I didn't need too lol. The multiclock is a godsend for any external sequencer integration & timed rhythmic lfo stuff :D
Ricky Tinez - Thanks a million for this.
I am curious if anyone at Ableton in Berlin has reached out to you and commented on this and said "there is a simpler way to do this." Not that there is OR that your solutions aren't enormously appreciated. Just curious as this is a helluva a problem we've all run into. (I don't like freeze and flatten, either.)
Thanks Ricky, I opened up TH-cam just now intending to search for this topic, and your video was first on my home page. This issue has been driving me crazy, much appreciated!
Ableton records a 2 bar loop so it can loop the last bar , if you have an insert effect with a tail, like delay or reverb , you will loop from effect recorded (I.e. mid bar) rather than the start where the effect won’t be as apparent because it’s only just starting to react. Thus you won’t loop from the dry beginning.
I never used to use freeze and had always made loops like this anyway, normally 16 bars with an 8 bar loop in the last 8 bars, until I realise freeze automated this process affectively.
I think buying Ableton has been the biggest mistake I've made while making music so far. For 3 years I haven't been able to record any vocals or guitars through my interface so now I go and buy a 4th gen Scarlet and its only 2 ms better so I'm really wishing I spent that money on a different DAW instead. My friend uses Logic and just pushes one button and has basically no latency with his whole vocal chain on. I've spent close to 40 hours probably trying to fix it and nothing works. This fix is still a mess that will take another half a day figuring out. I have a new MacBook pro and a new interface and still can't record anything cause Ableton can't figure it out. Ableton is garbage. Good video though, it looks like this might be the answer after 30 videos of searching over the last 3 years while frustrated. Focusrite support hasn't even been able to help
The problem with adjusting latency compensation,
If you keep making a big project, that latency value can change. Per track! So u always have this push pull of getting it down. Also, ableton, please make ableton more user friendly for bouncing audio.
Anyways, Welcome to the wonderful world of hardware 🤗
And yeah dude, u nailed it in the end. If u are just mixing, and u have ur finished track. Just send midi from it then use a seperate audio bus(make sure u have monitor on or u wont hear it)
Thank you for nerding out and getting to the bottom of this. One less thing to make my head hurt dealing with midi and track routing when I just wanna make beats
I recommend the video from Seed to Stage called "How to Record Midi Synths Without Latency in Ableton Live: External Instrument". He uses External Instrument and it's actually a lot easier with absolutely no latency.
Basically External Instrument is doing all the heavy lifting and even lets you adjust the hardware latency that ableton is unable to calculate (each synth has a different one so Ableton cannot know in advance)
I’ve struggled with this so much. People are always like “why do you also use Pro Tools?” And I then point out to all the stuff in Live that haven’t matured yet like delay compensation issues. Despite it being synth based it is awful with external synths
Thank you Ricky! This video was really clarifying and validating because I coincidentally went through a similar journey a few months ago when connecting my Novation Circuit to control Serum in Ableton. I didn’t know the difference between track delays, the clock settings, etc.
BEST video on youtube regading lantency hands down! Thank you!
Bit off topic, but can we all just take moment to appreciate mr Tinez’s lighting skills? I mean, there are some film noir type ratios in this vid!! Are you still on blackmagic Ricky? And you’re lit only by practicals? No wee little aputure softbox hiding outside the frame?
Definitely a primary/key light in addition to the practicals. Imo
I thought I was getting a weird subconscious Sherlock Holmes / Christopher Reeves hammer house vibe.
I feel like dealing with workarounds is my creativity-killer atm. I already own a push controller to activate one instrument after another and be able to play stuff in at once, but either I have latency in my recordings or I need to take several steps (change midi channel for another instrument, solo monitor the new audio track etc.) and break the workflow with it. Think I'll give your "not freeze and flatten" option yet another go, and see if I can improve on that.
Thanks SO much for this - That D button is a hidden GEM! Now my Virus TI is perfectly in sync with the rest of my track!! YASSSS :) thankyou!!
Hi Ricky, thanks for this info mate, I’ve been battling this for ages, surely Ableton could have a template that everyone could just load and Live could ‘listen to’ and adjust all ins and outs to as near to zero latency that the computer will allow. Cheers Glyn.
The only reason I think they haven't done this is (though - they should!) is the potential for unlucky, hardware/software/OS combinations for which a template still...would not work.
I say this as I suffered another enormous problem with Live and though they did work hard to try and fix it, they gave up. 'Their' hardware could not reproduce it. Unlucky me.
Two tracks + delay compensation is the way. Tried External Instrument and Freezing and thank god I figured out how to avoid the BS they introduce to the workflow.
I also have my interface set to monitor everything directly. You can't put insert effects on anything live but I tend to use built-in effects or sends 99% of the time and would rather have zero minimum latency when performing.
Logic Pro handles latency much better than my copy of Ableton Live in my experience. Logic can also handle a lot more at 128 Buffer Rate than Live too, making it better for input monitoring with fx and recording vocals.
The rule for monitoring and latency in a DAW is that you should record from the same place in the signal chain from which you are monitoring. If for example you want to record from your external instrument device rack you CANNOT record from your audio inputs because that is not where you are monitoring the signal. You need to tap the external instrument itself (post mixer) in the audio track channel and record that.
Similarly, in your example of recording midi to an audio track you made a mistake by setting the monitoring to In. When you set your midi to the grid you are effectively not monitoring through Ableton, which is why the timing is off since Live then moves the audio back by the amount of system latency. That is what you are seeing. If you set it to Off and have the correct hardware latency set, the recorded audio will match the bounced audio from the external instrument device.
Your description of what causes track delay is a bit off. Ableton knows about the system latency and you already adjusted for that (created by your audio interface). What it doesn't know is how much latency your midi device itself creates. Each one will be different (my guess is that yours is the additional 2ms of instrument latency you incorrectly added to the system latency). I usually compensate for this in the external instrument plugin itself, not the track delay which is better used to compensate for errors in plugin latency reporting.
Lastly, you need to be careful measuring a single transient when setting hardware latency since this will not compensate for midi jitter, which you can better approximate by averaging many measurements.
You're my savior , thank you do much. I hope in the future updates they're gonna salve these issues.
So you don’t just scroll the latency compensation til it reads 0.0 in the window? Thanks for heads up did not know that
I don't do a lot of external recording, but this video has been amazing, found ways to get 0 latency in, and the big one for me was that I don't need the external instrument plugin, I can send midi from one and get audio in on another track, that's the piece that I'm excited to learn today, thank you!
Maybe someone already mentioned but without using an External instrument plug-in, the latency keeps changing by inserting plug-ins and effects, so adjustments never end.
External instrument plug-in will compensate for all internal latencies in Ableton.
Fine-tuning can be done by "hardware latency" box. Also, allow a few milliseconds of jitter. Human is not sensitive to feeling 3ms.
Very useful video, thanks!
Also there is “Reduced Latency When Monitoring” option in Ableton Live. It might be one more variable in this latency equation.
Pro tip: group your properly configured and labeled external instrument and audio track, and save that as a template. No more setting up routing for your instruments!
thanks for that vid... dealing with this issue since 30 years :-) not that bad nowadays :-)...but it even gets worse, when you start adding audioplugs when mixing aside composing (especially on the master bus)...so once you add two or three master effects, you cant play midi notes anymore (latency is sometimes even close to a second!). thats what i am missing in ableton. cubase has this nice little button: once you are already deep in your mix and want to add f.e. a solo.. just press that latency compensation button, all heavy plugs are turned off and are out of the signal chain... no latency, no problems... cubase also handles this latency thing way better than ableton. cubase auto latency compensation also has way less issues with that problem you described. so in general i love using ableton for basic idea finding and then switch to cubase for finalizing, adding sparkles and mixing. makes my life so much easier :-)
YES THANK YOU VERY MUCH. A lot of official solutions (like you said) still left some latency to deal with.
Great vid, I am a recovering hardware or die cat, I feel a relapse coming. I also went thru the reality of Aira stuff being locked at 96khz(System1m)...and after all that bs, I'm thinking, man, if I just plug into a hardware recorder and go, all this frustration goes buh bye. I'm not about to get all these weird superstitious micro-rituals, oh yer usin' da funkenheimer dz1000? make sure you plug in the midi cable backwards, wait, is it tuesday? Scratch that, it's audio cables backward on tuesday.
ps the MX-1 can downsample all of those aira units to a user setting of 44.1/48/96, which seems a little...dastardly.
(audio clip of 'I've got the poison, I've got the remedy')
(angry cat face + audio clip of rage against the machine's 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me!')
yeah...relapse...
This works a treat. Finally have my machinedrum, A4 and Norns all syncing with in DAW stuff on the fly.
Only issue I’ve found is if I want to solo the audio I can’t. Same in a group or not. It kills the midi and therefore the play back.
There is a solo grouping max plugin, but that changes the midi track to not having midi out control!
Arghhhh sooooo close
Great video Ricky! Really important stuff. I also found this to be presented pretty engagingly for such dry subject matter. Your passion really shines through.
Thank you for this. I'm gonna try out what you did and see if it fixes the problem. I have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 as my interface and have this issue using my Roland Integra 7 with Roland A-49 midi controller. Ableton was of no support and like you mentioned in the video, they basically leave you to figure things out on your own. I don't like companies like that. I ended up buying a Tascam DP-03SD and have been using that to record my beats for my other youtube channel. Makes me feel like I wasted money on that Scarlett 18i20, I got the Included ableton 11 lite license and that's why they pretty much abandoned me. That didn't make me feel confident about their support and using their software.
nice to see u back on latency duties!
AMAZING VIDEO. Such a confusing topic distilled down to two options. Did not know about proper error compensation until now. Setting that up ASAP.
Ricky Tinez: I'm not a nerd
Also Ricky Tinez: This video
I'm here because I have latency in recording external instruments in Ableton Live also. However I never get this issue in Logic Pro when recording an instrument as Logic has an Auto compensate tick box that does all the magic for you. Thanks for sharing the knowledge Ricky. ✌
Are you doing a video on the 404 mk II?
Would love to see you make music on it! Compact creations?
This also works for tracking guitar or vocals for instance. You can have one track open to monitor the sound but don't record on that one record on another one with a monitoring is off and then scoot that waveform over
I mean, no need to scoot it over to get it almost right, just drag up the audio from the monitor “off” channel
THANK YOU!!!!! made my day after hours of frustration
Same conclusion : monitoring trough UAD apollo (this way = latency free + i can play with those gorgeous plugins latency free too. Can be replaced by an external mixer or ...) + monitoring on OFF in Ableton + separate midi and audio track. + I can choose if i print or not the effects, and if not, load the same plugins on the dry audio track recorded in Ableton and tweak later. Works very well here :)
Thats what i've been doing as well, although im not sure what Im doing 😅However, now that I want to record my tracks from my hardware that I have sequenced on into ableton as midi, I am having latency issues and not sure how to go about it without doing the 2 tips from Ricky. Do you record midi in from harware to ableton and if so, does it lign up automatically?
@@AnalogFlava yes, I record midi from hardware synth, then replay the midi to the hardware for sound design, then print, all with no latency and in sync in ableton
I am exactly in this point with Ableton... Thank you so much for clear explanation.
Thanks brother! What I find so weird is that I never experience this when using logic, even for audio tracks. So why is this such a big deal for ableton?! Well i think the track delay is the most convenient solution. Great research, you truly are a geek 😄😉
Ricky, thanks with all my heart
Thanks bro, you saved my life. Tried to figure out on how to sync my Elektron devices for ages 👏 BTW where is that clock information video you are talking about? Still I am having a hard time with getting my Rytm and A4 playing along with my Octatrack and recording everything simultaneously into Ableton. Especially when I use Overbridge. I guess I would need to play around with the delay compensation of the Overbridge channels and the clock information of the Octatrack. If the Octatrack is sending the Master clock everything runs smoothly. But I can’t figure out on how to use my Octatrack together with the other Elektron devices and Overbridge. A4 + Rytm are tight on grid with Overbrige, but the Octatrack is always delayed somehow. Thanks 🙏
It doesn't look like look like you have made any adjustment in the external instrument plug-in for the internal latency of the synth itself. Once you have the driver comp set properly, you can adjust the hardware latency in the plug-in itself.
Your intro gave me life😍🎶🎶
ERM Multiclock was one of the best non sexy pieces of gear I've ever purchased bc of Live's latency. Tracking through an Apollo helped as well.
Somebody forgot how 1080p works, lol. Thanks for the info bud!
Ricky, thank you for sharing. Curious as to what is your computer monitor, screen size? specs?
Pro tools HDX for recording and Live to ONLY sequence your MIDI. Delay compensation it's only a band aid
Ok good infos !but which is the best settings when using overbridge?for example... enable the clock +transport in overbridge and untick all midi ableton sync settings?or disable click transport at overbridge and tick the sync button in ableton midi settings and adjust the ms for latency?
@6:10 - yeeah, man! That`s always has been the most mysterious thing for me either :)
I really like the way you convey information and the overall quality, thanks man! Would greatly appreciate if you can tell anything on optimising latency issues in live looping performances (multichannel), I'm aiming for a complex setup with audio, midi looping and resampling things like omnisphere
Thanks for the vid Ricky but what about if you have the ERM multiclock still have to do the delay thing on the track ? Peace!
@Ricky Tinez, what is your current camera setup?
After recordings my samples, I just set the start marker to the right place. That does the trick too and no need to think like crazy on this topic :D cheers
All individual tracks are out of time with eachother then, that my friend is a disgusting solution lol
Also, if you are using bluetooth headphones, you might want to plug some in instead. No clue why I didn't realize it but after I ran the midi audio into an audio track and found that it was in time, I realized, it must be something else. After smacking myself in the head, I plugged back in my real headphones.
I'm just gonna say it... I was waiting religiously for a Ricky Tinez sp404mkii video! Hopefully this is not about Roland not sending him one cos I'll start a riot
@@beefeeb I thought about that but I don't know... Ricky's super popular and it's not like he doesn't rave about synths and samplers outside of the novation family. I wouldn't be surprised if novation actually asked him not to review it in order not to stomp on the circuit rhythm.
Wow, super helpful video, never knew about the track delay thanks!!
FL Studio has no issue with such things. I'm just starting with AL and I can't believe I have to setup all milliseconds to all my hardware. Thanks for indepth analysis
i've wanted to solve this issue since 2004 or so and i still don't know how, but i did appreciate the video, and hope to solve it somehow someday. still think ableton should just fix this on their own end.
Could you not direct monitor from your interface so you’re hearing your interface latency free, then record in Ableton with the audio track set to off and a seperate midi track for control?
Ye this is unfortunately the best solution. But it would be nice to be able to manipulate sound live in Ableton LIVE!
Fantastic video. Glad I found you.
I have a problem though. This technique totally works, even timing two different Roland boutiques with different latencies, the problem is that it’s not constant; meaning that after I pause and hit play again it all drifts a little, and after adding more channels it changes again and I find that I need to re tweak the delay compensation. How can I solve this for a performance set up? Maybe someone can shed some light….
I’ve been using this program since 2006 and still can’t figure this shit out. So frustrating as yes, it constantly shifts.
Great vid Ricky! Ive been battling with this issue for years. Ive tried a milion different timming values in order to get all my hardware in sync with software and all of my hardware sequencers at the same time.
Im really wondering if your internal ableton effects are also dead on the money the way you have everything setup. Im almost certain that its slightly off and your not hearing it..try running a beat repeat with quarter notes on ableton push over an already playing clip in ableton also playing quarter notes. Are they playing in time? This is one of my biggest issues in ableton, because the rest is dead on the money nice and tight. Wish someone could make a maxforlive device to offset your internal clock used for effects. My workaround for this, using delay compensation to align the internal effects clock with the rest. But doing this obviously throws everything off the grid again. You just cant seem to get it all in ableton its give and take.