KVR Audio

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:27 am

vstyler wrote:Why would anyone have their soundcard at 1024? LOL

They probably wouldn't, but that's not the point. Why is Live introducing a full buffer's worth of lag each time you add a VST in sequence? Put another way, your setting of 64 only applies if you're only using native Live devices. The moment you add even one VST instrument or effect it immediately gets bumped up to 128 and so on.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:29 am

Tronam wrote:
vstyler wrote:Why would anyone have their soundcard at 1024? LOL
They probably wouldn't, but that's not the point. Why is Live introducing a full buffer's worth of lag each time you add a VST in sequence? Put another way, your setting of 64 only applies if you're only using native Live devices. The moment you add even one VST instrument or effect it immediately gets bumped up to 128 and so on.

You positive this applies to every plugin?

It might be specific to certain plugins.

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:32 am

Every single VST or AU I tested. The ones that introduce their own latency simply added it on top of that.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:36 am

Tronam wrote:Every single VST or AU I tested. The ones that introduce their own latency simply added it on top of that.

I'll have to test this out when I get my Macbook Pro back up and running. I only can test these plugins because it's all i own.

Cytomic The Glue & The Drop
Fxpansion Synthsquad, Tremor, BFD Eco
Madrona Labs Aalto,
Cakewalk Z3TA+2 Mac
SpectrumWorx
Crusher-X 3 Mac (32bit only)

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 4:20 am

vstyler wrote:Why would anyone have their soundcard at 1024? lol

People that do orchestral music, particularly a fullish symphonic template up, do it all the time. I have had to with probably a much more robust system than yours due to the amount of processing used. I tend to manage things so as to put that much latency off until later. You imagine that every person does what you do and never more than 'several plugins inline on a vocal track'? Fail.

2020 · Post by **2020** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:00 am

I'll have to test this out when I get my Macbook Pro back up and running. I only can test these plugins because it's all i own.

Cytomic The Glue & The Drop
Fxpansion Synthsquad, Tremor, BFD Eco
Madrona Labs Aalto,
Cakewalk Z3TA+2 Mac
SpectrumWorx
Crusher-X 3 Mac (32bit only)

I can confirm it applies to every VST/AU plugin I've tested.

If you want to test it:
Change your plugin buffer latency to say 512
Turn PDC off (so it doesn''t compensate)
Put an identical audio loop on two channels
Put several instances of a dry VST or AU audio effect on the first channel

To me personally this is actually much worse than the broken PDC. That I can work around in various ways (e.g. only using zero latency plugins).

Dean Aka Nekro · Post by **Dean Aka Nekro** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:17 am

echosystm wrote:This is unique to Disableton.

hibidy wrote:haha!

Disableton.

haha that one was quality, Tickled me

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:38 am

jancivil wrote:
vstyler wrote:Why would anyone have their soundcard at 1024? lol
People that do orchestral music, particularly a fullish symphonic template up, do it all the time. I have had to with probably a much more robust system than yours due to the amount of processing used. I tend to manage things so as to put that much latency off until later. You imagine that every person does what you do and never more than 'several plugins inline on a vocal track'? Fail.

Yes, for my larger soundtrack projects 512 or higher helps immensely with CPU usage.

krandr · Post by **krandr** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 2:41 pm

Here is my solution how to prevent high latency on Ableton 8:
1. Plugin buffer size - 128 samples
2. One VST wrapper per audio patch. I'm using KORE2 FX - it is VST wrapper without latency

3. VST wrapper connected to Master bus

Now my fingers can play fast

Unfortunately Live 9 has fixed Plugin buffer size with amount of your audio buffer size

Echoes in the Attic · Post by **Echoes in the Attic** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 3:23 pm

There's no need to test, it's confirmed by Ableton. Every plug-in adds the audio buffer of latency. And not only plug-ins. Every Max for Live device adds the audio buffer of latency. This to me is even crazier because there are many little Max for Live utilities and tools and they can add up quick.

This is what really aggravates the PDC issue in Live. Synced effects and automation go off when you have longish effects chains and you are especially prevented from working at high audio buffers because it screws up everything. It would normally make sense to work at higher buffers when not recording live since it's easier on CPU, but with Live it's just not a good idea.

2020 · Post by **2020** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 3:32 pm

Echoes,

Do you know if Ableton has given any explanation for this added latency per plugin behaviour? Is it a live performance/gapless audio engine thing?

Echoes in the Attic · Post by **Echoes in the Attic** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 3:55 pm

2020 wrote:Echoes,

Do you know if Ableton has given any explanation for this added latency per plugin behaviour? Is it a live performance/gapless audio engine thing?

There did used to be a separate plug-in buffer setting in prefences that was set by default to "As Audio buffer" but you could change it to lower. But they removed it because they said it caused issues sometimes having them set to different values. I don't know what issues, their words.

With other hosts you can load as many third party effects in a row as you want with whatever buffer you want and the latency doesn't change (provided they are zero latency plugs). This is true for Bitwig as well which is performance oriented. So I don't know what the deal is there.

2020 · Post by **2020** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 4:00 pm

Yeah. I'm still on 8 so I do have that setting.

I vaguely remember a lengthy answer from Robert Henke on the Ableton forum about this but can't find that post now or recall the explanation.

Still, as you say, other plugin hosts manage this, so why not Live...

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 4:33 pm

Working several years with Live and did not really notice PDC issues during that time.
The release and all that talk about PDC was going on my nerves so i thought i would have to do a test myself and one that is at least close to features i use myself.

So based on what i was reading here I decided to do a test with a buffer of 512 and in Live 9.1.1 64-bit (on Windows 7 64-bit).

I created two tracks with a Saurus pad sound where i reduced the attack and release to 0, turned off internal FXs and and panned the two tracks hard left and hard right.

In track 1 no FXs added while in track 2 i added (all FXs switched on):
TAL Chorus-LX and ArtsAcoustic Big Rock Phase Shifter, PSP NobleQex (EQ), Stillwell Audio Bombardier Bus Compressor.

Here are some tests and the results:

A) PDC switched on, no automation used

After rendering audio, listening to the audio and also checking inside Wavelab Elements 7 i did not find any delay with the two stereo channels that coorespond to the synth without and with FXs.

B) PDC switched off, no automation used

Without PDC there is indeed a delay that corresponds to around 4 x 512 samples (with the 4 FXs mentioned above used). So each FX adds the size of the buffer like others mentioned here.

C) PDC switched on, automation for the track volume used

Now i tried to do a test for automation of the track volume which is one kind of automation i use quite often.
I had set the automation in a way that for one of the sustained chords for the pad sounds the volue is set to 0 which means with this chord no sound should be noticed.

I rendered the two Saurus tracks (again panned left and right) to a new audio track.

In this case (buffer at 512) the result looked like this:

There seems to be some delay with the auomation and at the stereo channel with the 4 FXs i hear a very short sound while the other stereo channel stays quiet like intended.

I then tried to change the buffer size to 256 and then 128 and the results looked like this:
- buffer at 256:

- buffer at 128:

With 128 the delay almost completely seems to disappear and the sound is too short to really notice it.

With the example at a buffer of e.g. 512 this could be corrected by slightly shifting the right border of the automation:

The reason why i never noticed this could be based on the fact that in a busy track with layered sounds and/or multiple sounds playing at the same time this kind of very short unwanted sound is hard or impossible to notice.
It is only really easy to notice if you really have a silent part like in this example.

Of course it also depends on how many FXs you use in one track and how much buffer you are using. Finally this should mostly happen when using automation which is not always the case.

While this indeed is not really nice it will not really hold me back from using Live in the future. In almost any case it should be possible to solve this when needed.

'

Ingo

Tronam · Post by **Tronam** » Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:14 pm

In my case it means that unless I run Live at extremely low buffer sizes, which I can't do with large arrangements, the latency starts adding up quickly. It essentially nullifies the value of zero latency plugins because there's no such thing outside of the native devices. I love Live, but the way Ableton implemented 3rd party plugin support is perplexing.

Cumulative buffer latency in Ableton??