Cumulative buffer latency in Ableton??

[Tronam]

I'm specifically referring to Live adding additional latency (equal to your sound card buffer) to every single VST instrument or effect that gets loaded. No other VST host that I'm aware of behaves like this.

I can confirm this behavior. What's the benefit of this way of VST wrapper implementation? I assume there must be benefit as they decieded to sacrifice latency.

My completely uneducated guess is that maybe when Ableton first incorporated 3rd party plugin support the additional buffer helped them reduce hiccups in the audio stream if you added VSTs while a live session was running. Back then their uninterrupted live performance audio engine was one of the product's biggest selling points. I could be completely wrong though, because it still hiccups anyway.

[hibidy]

Hey, I agree. I have no clue why they haven't addressed the issue.

Money. People seem to forget that music companies are companies. Staff are accountable to the board and the board are accountable to the shareholders. They can't just go and do something out of altruism. I guarantee you there's at least one guy at Ableton right now who is sitting at his desk thinking "why can't they just f***ing approve me to fix this s**t".

A lot of noobs use Ableton, because they hear of so many famous people using it. Thus, 9/10 Ableton users will never notice this problem, so there is no business case for fixing it. Unfortunately, the people who do know what they are doing suffer because of this.

Over time, there will be enough people complaining about it that even the noobs will stop wanting to use Ableton. At that point, they will fix it (or go out of business). Deadmau5, one of the original Ableton poster boys, made his disdain for the PDC issue quite public when he switched to Cubase. If you want this fixed, start making a big deal about it publicly.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Ableton were already well into a rewrite. There was over 3 years between Live 8 and Live 9, yet all they have to show for it is a few UI changes, Push and two plugins that weren't even written by them (The Glue and EQ Eight). When Live 9 came out, my first thought was "they're running out of funding for a rewrite and need some bling to increase sales".

Maybe, hard to tell.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Much has been said about Live's plug-in delay compensation and its various issues with automation, but am I the last person in the room to discover that Ableton essentially treats all native VST/AU plugins like the UAD or other such DSP cards? What I mean by this is that each time a plugin is loaded in series this induces another full buffer's worth of latency on top of whatever latency the plugin may already introduce internally. Maybe this is common knowledge now to most of you, but I'm quite surprised to learn this. For example, if I disable PDC in Logic and chain 10 "zero latency" plugins on a track parallel to a duplicate without them, the tracks will still be in sync with each other. In Live with a sound card buffer size of 512 samples, that same parallel track will have over 5000 samples of latency. How many other DAWs behave this way?

Sounds grim. Have you experienced these 5000 samples of latency yourself when you use Live?

I ask because I've been using Live myself for years and don't notice it at all. Maybe I'm so addled that I just can't notice 5000 samples of latency. What's your experience with Live?

Tronam is correct in all his findings so far. I have covered this plugin buffer latency in depth in my ableton pdc topic. And no other daw in existence today behaves like this.

[2020]

Hi Theo,

Do you have a link to your PDC topic?

[liquidsound]

If you speak about my own test i just added i never used Live without PDC activated and the peblem i just found only happens with automation used and even then it could happen you don' notice with a "busy" song with multiple tracks going on.
That example i posted at the last page is only really noticed when having a silent part in the song.
As i mentined the problem also more or less gets "lost" with lower buffer sizes

The main purpose of this thread was not Live's handling of PDC and automation. That has already been beaten to death. It's more about their unusual VST implementation which behaves unlike anything else I've seen, including Bitwig.

Put as simply as possible, let's say I start a new project set up like this:


I then add an instance of Zebra followed by an EQ and compressor plugin. Since PDC is enabled, now my entire project is effectively operating like this:


I can only speak for myself, but that's a very noticeable amount of latency. No other DAW that I'm aware of acts like this unless they're running a UAD interface. This was always one of the big complaints about using DSP cards: each plugin introduced a full buffer of lag.

Hi Tronam,
I'm on my laptop with Asio4All and the old Live 8.4.2 ( I haven't install v9 yet).
I can't reproduce what you are saying. Is this a v9.0 issue?

[Tronam]

Hi Tronam,
I'm on my laptop with Asio4All and the old Live 8.4.2 ( I haven't install v9 yet).
I can't reproduce what you are saying. Is this a v9.0 issue?

It applies to Live 8 as well and is easy to reproduce. First disable PDC by unchecking it in the menu:


* Set your soundcard ASIO buffer to something like 512
* In Session view add an identical drum loop to two Audio tracks and start playing them
* Insert any zero latency VST plugin on one of the tracks and start duplicating it

You'll immediately hear phasing with the first VST effect plugin and each time you duplicate it another 512 samples of latency will be added to the track.

If by chance it doesn't do this, then the issue is unique to the Mac platform, but I don't think that's the case.

[samsam]

^ That's interesting.

So serious question - is my leaving PDC on all the time the reason (like I said before) that I never noticed this issue?

[Tronam]

^ That's interesting.

So serious question - is my leaving PDC on all the time the reason (like I said before) that I never noticed this issue?

Probably. Let's assume you're one of those lucky people with a computer/interface powerful enough to run large projects at a buffer of 64 samples. Let's also say that on any individual track or return you load no more than 3 VST plugins at a time. They could all be effects or a VST instrument followed by 2 effects at some point later in this track's chain. With PDC enabled your entire project latency will increase like this:

Add VST instrument: 64 > 128
Add 1st VST effect: 128 > 192
Add 2nd VST effect: 192 > 256

A buffer size of 256 samples is approximately 8ms of latency. For most people that's short enough to not be noticeable and probably not a big deal at all. The problem is that the larger your initial buffer, the more this added latency is compounded.

[liquidsound]

Hi Tronam,
I'm on my laptop with Asio4All and the old Live 8.4.2 ( I haven't install v9 yet).
I can't reproduce what you are saying. Is this a v9.0 issue?

It applies to Live 8 as well and is easy to reproduce. First disable PDC by unchecking it in the menu:


* Set your soundcard ASIO buffer to something like 512
* In Session view add an identical drum loop to two Audio tracks and start playing them
* Insert any zero latency VST plugin on one of the tracks and start duplicating it

You'll immediately hear phasing with the first VST effect plugin and each time you duplicate it another 512 samples of latency will be added to the track.

If by chance it doesn't do this, then the issue is unique to the Mac platform, but I don't think that's the case.

So far nothing.
Anyone on PC having this outcome?

[2020]

I use Live 8.4.2. on both OSX (Mavericks) and Win 7 and this happens on both platforms.

[liquidsound]

I can't explain it then.

[samsam]

^ That's interesting.

So serious question - is my leaving PDC on all the time the reason (like I said before) that I never noticed this issue?

Probably. Let's assume you're one of those lucky people with a computer/interface powerful enough to run large projects at a buffer of 64 samples. Let's also say that on any individual track or return you load no more than 3 VST plugins at a time. They could all be effects or a VST instrument followed by 2 effects at some point later in this track's chain. With PDC enabled your entire project latency will increase like this:

Add VST instrument: 64 > 128
Add 1st VST effect: 128 > 192
Add 2nd VST effect: 192 > 256

A buffer size of 256 samples is approximately 8ms of latency. For most people that's short enough to not be noticeable and probably not a big deal at all. The problem is that the larger your initial buffer, the more this added latency is compounded.

OK, thanks for the details, sincerely.

My Mac ain't that powerful but (a) I always have PDC on and (b) I often have long chains of plugs and I do not notice anything untoward . Therefore, for whatever reason, this doesn't seem like something that affects me in any noticeable way. TBH I personally find the much-vaunted Logic to be more laggy in all respects on my Mac than Live is.

[Except for Ozone. Ozone on my machine produces a ton of latency but that's mastering so hey, never mind]

[2020]

liquidsound,

That is strange. Do you mind me asking what audio interface and latency you use?

With 512 samples, no latency compensation and 4 or so VST plugins (not live plugins) on one of the tracks you should definitly hear the phasing.

[liquidsound]

2020,
Asio4all @ 512.
I'm back home and I will test again.
BTW, in the dialog Tronam is showing with the ms., mine do not change. 32ms all the way.
Another thing that confuses me is that in that post "with the PDC Enabled" adding a Zebra with an EQ and a compressor to a new project he gets those values and I can't repeat it.

I've never cared for PDC but this intrigues me.

[Tronam]

2020,
Asio4all @ 512.
I'm back home and I will test again.
BTW, in the dialog Tronam is showing with the ms., mine do not change. 32ms all the way.
Another thing that confuses me is that in that post "with the PDC Enabled" adding a Zebra with an EQ and a compressor to a new project he gets those values and I can't repeat it.

I've never cared for PDC but this intrigues me.

The values won't visibly change in the preferences window. I included the second screenshot to help illustrate what is effectively happening in the background.