Need some help here, cant seem to get midi to lock dead on =

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:48 pm

Greetings all,

Well, I know this is not the proper forum but I am getting desperate at this point, so I apologize to start

Now, for some reason I can not seem to overcome, I am noticing midi drifting ever so slightly in and out of sync, its so minor that what it does is create a phasing effect, as an example:

I make a 4/4 kick drum with the plug in "Kickme" and write it at lets say 135, now I play this against the metronome in either SX or Nuendo and I can hear the kick going in and out of sync.

I called CW and spoke with paul, who has been very helpfull in all my questions, but we were unable to come to a conclusion to fix the issue at that time.

I then went and perfornmed a massive tweak fest to XP, I mean tons of things editing .inf files in windows, bios settings, turning off any and all gui processes that can slow down sync, audio changes in XP, re-installing midi drivers, updating MROS drivers, and so on, kets just say it was ALOT of tweaks

But for some damn reason it just didnt fix the issue. You see for me I always program drums with Battery, and if I use the kick from SFP and then layer hats and claps from battery you can really hear the flang like issue, its driving me nuts, because my ears just happen to be VERY sensitive to these little things.

Does any one have any ideas on what may be causing this? the midi does not drift out of time, it just sort of phases from perfect sync to a smidge out and then back in.

I have no ideas left from here except to try and update to the latest and greatest DirectX, but I do not know for sure that could have anything to do with the midi timing, I guess I am just starting to throw "S" at the wall and see what sticks

Thanks in advance!

Cheers!

Post by **garyb** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:55 pm

maybe it's the metronome

.
i'd just shut off the metronome.i'm assuming that this is happening in spite of quantisation....sounds like an sx problem...

it doesn't sound like a big problem to me,a human would be much worse.(from your discription)strange.

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:08 pm

Well the problem is when I start to layer hats on top of the kick it creates a slight slapback effect, I do electronic music, human feel is not particulalry as important as timing is, this also happens with synths and such aswell.

Maybe its just me, but my style of composition I prefer tight oriented sounds. This also creates an enourmous problem when layering kick drums, a technique I use frequently, where I take advanatge of 2 kick drums phasing together that creates a sort of stereo compression sound, this is not possible with the midi timing not being as tight as I am used to, infact it makes the peak of the kicks off and causing annoying atrifacts.

I have tried everything I can think of, any ideas?

sinix · Post by **sinix** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 10:13 pm

Basic P,

I hear ya and I feel ya, but the dead hard reality is what your experiencing isn't going to go away! Trust me, I hope you can prove me wrong!

Once your used to the sample accurate timing of a drum vsti like Battery anything midi (aside from a protocol like rewire) is simply going to seem sloppy to you, especially for electronic 4/4 like I do as well.

I *love* KickMe! BUT, I've gotten used to coming up with nice sounds, recording them and placing them back into Battery. I have noticed that Kickme does hang a bit at times as well, so it's not just your system. Personally, I think the built in drum synth from Creamware is a bit more consistant (although it sounds like poo in comparison) but even that one has issues too. It's just the nature of midi and timing latency.

For synths, fx and general work these millisecond drifts mean nothing, but for what you want it's enough to throw you off. My Emu e4xt sampler had the same issues too.

Stick creating new sounds and placing them back into a vsti sample player and be happy. Scope as you are finding out is an amazing platform and I wouldn't hold this against it at all.

Now if only Creamware could implement a sample accurate protocol like Rewire for the audio and midi?

Go back to having fun!

[ This Message was edited by: sinix on 2003-09-03 23:15 ]

oioi · Post by **oioi** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:47 am

it could be a steinberg prob. timing in cubase sx was well sloppy and has been so say 'fixed' in the updates...althou its not as tight as it should be. But when sx first came out there was a real bad timing bug that was causing midi to go all over the place. check out the steinberg forums, lots of postings about it.When i use Logic, the song always sounds tighter. just a thouht.

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 3:43 pm

Well,

I am starting to ruin out of ideas =/ I understand the theory of it will never lock dead on as sample accurate playing of battery is rendered, but this is driving me a little crazy =/

It is so noticible with Kickme, I just play it to the metronome and it just drifts. I have done a slew of XP tweaks, a ton of optimization changes, made sure I am using all real midi ports, not emulations, checked all my sx/nuendo settings, and I still hear this slight drift going in and out of sync while playing kickme as example..

There has to be something I can do to get this to work...

Cheers!

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 5:21 pm

if you want sample accurate timing let me calculate: half a millisecond is about 20 samples (at 48k) and this was more than clearly noticable when I accidently monitored both ways of a signal through my adat mixer.

You can't get this right on a non-realtime OS. The OS and your sequencer aren't precise enough if the processing leaves a certain 'frame' - in your case the sequencer.
The metronome and Cubase internal timing are accurate (let's assume this), but Cubase has no control about what's coming from outside, like data over PCI bus etc.

The OS has no particular interest in keeping the team together at that scale of precision. A simple midi through is already in the 5 ms range if I remember it right.

That's what the saving the instrument's output to a wave file 'workaround' is for.

You probably could do the same in the other direction and record with VDAT - the point is to keep it all under a single enivironement if you need that precision level .

just 2 cents, Tom

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2003-09-04 18:26 ]

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 5:33 pm

Just remembered that there were a few articles in Sound on Sound about this (these ones are older than 3 months, so you should be able to read them without a subscription):
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Sep02/a ... e471bc1116
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct02/a ... e471bc1116
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar00/a ... e471bc1116

The first two have some useful data about midi timing, as measured by Martin Walker. The last one is a more general and slightly older article.

Cheers,
Will

Willybomb · Post by **Willybomb** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 6:34 pm

maybe it's the metronome .
i'd just shut off the metronome.i'm assuming that this is happening in spite of quantisation....sounds like an sx problem...

Actually, someone somewhere was saying to me that ALL midi metronomes have a timing issue. Try creating a sample loop in acid or something similar and see if that's any better.

interloper · Post by **interloper** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 9:11 pm

I've had this problem, and when your partner is a dj, you hear about it a lot, trust me. My drums were all over the place until some of these steps were taken.

1. Record the kick from kick me, maybe a couple of good takes. Then, in SX cut out one of them. Place it where it needs to be and make duplicate copies. Then place those. After you made sure that that kick is dead on, use the draw tool to create a wrapper for all the kicks in the bar. Then use the glue tool to join them. Your kick should be dead on as audio, never play it back via midi.

2. After your kick is in place and you've sequenced more percussion, bounce individual parts down to audio (hats, toms, claps, snares) as individual or group files. Then take your best compressor and run each from a separate channel coming from SX directly into the compressor. You could also turn on the side chain and select the kick as the input (coz you know its on) and adjust the individual compressor settings to act on the parts so that the dynamics are in time for each part.

3. Also, try zooming in on the offending part and turn of the snap. Then bump it backwards or forwards until you reach the desired synchronicity (you gotta zoom in pretty damn close).

[ This Message was edited by: interloper on 2003-09-04 22:13 ]

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 9:45 pm

Thanks for the tips all,

I guess I am just used to dead lock, sample accurate drum programing from battery

What I have done for now is to record a kick from kickme into SF and then then turn that into a .wav for playback from battery, it becomes once again dead locked

but then we move into another realm, the synths, while not nearly as obvious as kickme was, there is a slight delay lol, I know I am nit picking here but what can I say, I have been training my ears for many years as a drummer and a dj/composer who does electrnic music which does not typically follow the human feel method...

Gahh this is giving me a head ache, all I wanna do is make music not become a computer scientist..

Cheers!

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Thu Sep 04, 2003 10:09 pm

Are you using the 'emulator' midi drivers in SX?

Otherwise what midi sources are you using, and do you have other midi hardware that you can test with.

Sam

interloper · Post by **interloper** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 12:30 am

Why not nudge the synths as well? I guess I'm not seeing why you are so frustrated. You are learning a new system, you will have to go through some growing pains. If everybody could do it on the first try, everyone and their brother would be doing it.

You even have the choice to nudge in either midi or audio format...(?) Get it as good as you can with your best take, then edit the midi...

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 3:17 am

there is also a setting for midi to audio delay (at least there is one in VST 5) which can delay the audio compared to the midi if you've got a slight midi lag you can compensate with this. It works although it takes some time to find the correct amount of delay. It's easiest to do it with a midi drumsound and try to sync that up with a drumloop from Battery.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 3:47 am

try vdat, the sequencer should sync to it sample accurate. I had midi timing problems, using vdat solve those

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 3:52 am

the problem isn't the delay, but the variation in delay time. It shifts forward and backward around an 'imaginary' clock.
The SoundonSound survey mentioned by W_Ellis comes to the same conclusion.
In comparison to that Basic Pitch's system performes extremely well, just not good enough for him.
The OS simply lacks a systemwide timing resource with sample accurate precision and high priority.

cheers, Tom

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 9:24 am

Thanks all,

Yes, Astro is about as close as one could get to my issue I suppose, my system is a performing extremely well, its build solely for DAW usage, tweaked and parts picked basad on CW daw system..

The midi just has a slight drift so as was said earlier, nudging or compensating latency is not really a possible resolve due to the sound going in and out, think of this is auto-panning L/R

Only problem is it is so slight that its not major, but to my ears I hear it quite clearly, go figure

Just a clarification hear as well, I do own SX but I use Nuendo as my primary sequencer, due to it having PDC and some other nifty features I cant live with out...

As for midi, I run a Steinber Midex8 which is optimized via LTB for precise midi timing in they're apps SX>Nuendo. I have tested this issue with outboard gear and am unable to get the same results. The way I trigger my CW synths is via "Creamware In/Out 1" not to mistaken for the emulated drivers..

I have copied the port filter from the midi folder in both SX/Nuendo and copied it to the main directory thus giving me all ports available, then cleaning up by disabling any emulation or 401 ports showing.

This is not nearly as noticable when using synths, but it pretty much makes any options of using drum parts from CW off limits for me, and what scares me even more is that, though I have not yet tested this but I am going to take a wild guess and assume using any CW samplers are going to yield the same late timing issues upon triggering banks =/

Welp, I am at work now so I guess now is a good time to read those atricles posted..

Cheers!

valis · Post by **valis** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 9:35 am

I think it depends on how you work. The problem here is phasing or flamming of highly percussive sounds layered between your sequencer and Sx. I believe the solution was mentioned by someone here, and it is to do you layering of the drum sounds either completely in Cubase or completely in SFP.

Personally I do all my percussion in software (Logic+Exs, rm iv, etc) and do all my 'main' synth sounds with my dsps and a few external devices routed through SFP. The software will also provide some vsti's for 'effects' and transitional sounds, as well as serving as a place to bounce/record and track audio out.

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 9:53 am

Blech...

However, even with this extra help, there are still several situations where the basic MIDI timing resolution isn't sufficient. When you have several 'simultaneous' sounds, it may become increasingly important to keep them locked exactly in sync. For instance, while pad sounds may be happy even when skewed by 10ms or more from other instruments, multitracked drums will exhibit flamming when spread by even a couple of milliseconds, and in extreme cases with layered sounds you may experience notch filtering, or even phase cancellation. For this reason, it's unwise to create composite drum sounds using multiple hardware MIDI synths, as they can't be locked together to an accuracy of less than a few milliseconds.

This doesn't apply to multiple sounds selected within a single synth or sampler, since these can all be fed from the same incoming MIDI note data, so that the timing between them is a matter of internal rather than MIDI precision. However, even here you may not get a sample-accurate lock, which is one reason why so many musicians are moving over to VST and DX Instruments for drum sounds, since here you are guaranteed sample-accurate timing and can therefore indulge in layering to your heart's content. Another approach is to replace MIDI-triggered drum sounds by sampled drum loops, even if you create your own using MIDI synths, since this also ensures that your rhythms remain locked in perfect sync. Just as with audio tracks, if even a single sample in the stream slips out of place, you'll hear it as a click or pop. So, if you don't hear one of these, your soft synths are almost guaranteed to be playing back with 'perfect' timing.

Hrmm, have I just been using battery for too long? is it just that its only so prominent when using drum sounds?

Cheers!

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 11:13 am

Hi,

Consider that you can generate your rythms in Vst track, to get the tightness you need, and then use SFP tools (modulars, fx, splitted routing, filters) to get totally new sounds.

Btw, something can be done also native, using the card dsp for the "Sound".

For my needs the tightness inside sfp is more than optimal. But leaving drums to native can be clever, as it's not an hassle for cpu too....