Any way to change MIDI 'latency'?

[PubliusD]

Hi everyone
I've been using MuLab for a little while now and before that I used Cubase 5. However I have never had a MIDI controller and today have made my first foray into using one. I bought a MicroKorg. I want to play in some drums.
I've loaded up shortcircuit VST with some drum samples in MuLab and set the Microkorg up to play the samples. However, there's a short gap between when I press the keys and when I hear the sample, making live application or tracking nearly impossible. Is there any way to change this, either from within MuLab or within the MicroKorg?

Thanks!

[ghettosynth]

Hi everyone
I've been using MuLab for a little while now and before that I used Cubase 5. However I have never had a MIDI controller and today have made my first foray into using one. I bought a MicroKorg. I want to play in some drums.
I've loaded up shortcircuit VST with some drum samples in MuLab and set the Microkorg up to play the samples. However, there's a short gap between when I press the keys and when I hear the sample, making live application or tracking nearly impossible. Is there any way to change this, either from within MuLab or within the MicroKorg?

Thanks!

So, FYI, although there is such a thing as midi latency, what you're probably noticing is latency due to your audio driver, it's really a misnomer to refer to it as midi latency. I don't have mulab but there is almost certainly a setting in mulab to change the latency settings for your audio driver. You want to reduce the buffer size to an acceptable level adequate for your setup.

[PubliusD]

Great...ok in the audio menu I have NME Number of blocks and NME block size.
Which of these should I be changing?

[RunBeerRun]

Huh? Maybe try asking here in the MuLab forum, never heard of that stuff, I've seen buffer size but I don't think anything about blocks.

[BertKoor]

Presuming the buffer size is blocks * block-size, both will have the effect of lowering the buffer size and thus reducing latency.

Just experiment. It won't blow up in your face

[pljones]

NME blocks and block size is in the OP's audio driver not in MuLab.

In other low level audio software I've seen, it's as BertKoor suggests - n blocks, each m samples big giving n*m samples of delay. I'd suggest the number of blocks should be a minimum of three (just gut feel / experience) but get the size of the blocks as low as possible (64 samples or less).

Whilst it (probably ) won't blow up in your face, pushing the audio driver too hard has been known to lock up and reboot machines, so don't try this whilst doing things you want to keep, until you're happy you've got a solid set up. The other point to note is that the lower the settings, the more demand is put on your CPU, so you could eventually run out of CPU power to keep up -- getting drop outs (clicks, buzzing, etc).

[thecontrolcentre]

Did you install the latest usb driver for the micro? If not get it here:
http://www.korg.co.uk/downloads/driver/dl_driver.asp

[PubliusD]

I'm using ASIO4ALL now and it's pretty much perfect. Although I can't use any other software - iTunes etc, while it's running. Odd, but workable.

[psychoxkps]

best for this is audio interface.. there u can set buffer size.. i recommend you komplete audio 6 if u already don't have one but place yours interface sampling frequency to minimum.. u save cpu power and place buffer size to minimum to not hear cracks in audio.. if u have notice in your daw(that's probably in every daw) set it under input, processing and output latency to overall under 20ms.. and i should be fine and you got nice responses..

or other words..

sampling rate and buffer size is just combination of parameters to set latency optimally to have low latency and don't hear cracks(save cpu)....

[psychoxkps]

lol.. minimum i think 44100khz..

[psychoxkps]

*44100hz.. nice three posts:)))

[golden beers]

buffer size and driver. also direct monitoring helps.

depending on which interface you have, driver can make a big difference. in fact i think this is the main difference between USB midi interfaces. i use edirol, which i love - good driver. but as others have said, buffer size

[pljones]

"Direct monitoring" can be very, very confusing... it's a nice idea but leads to all sorts of problems. You're bypassing the ADC/DAC buffering, to avoid the latency you hear when playing through a capture device. If you're trying to play in time with audio output through the DAC, then you're in for trouble. You're hearing it after it's been sent, your input arrives at a further delay, so the recorded sounds are well off the time you thought they were going to be.

The only real answer is getting the buffer size down to an acceptable amount (and using good headphones so you can't hear any direct sound from what you're playing - less confusing).