Virtual instrument latency problems!!!!!

[ScottFB]

Hi,
All I'm trying to do is record a midi track using BFD while listening to the PT click track plug-in!?!?!?!?!?!
How do you eliminate or deal with latency when using the PT click plug-in in conjunction with other instrument plug-ins (BFD)???.....when I try to record a midi BFD track (or any other plug-in instrument) on either a midi or instrument track along with the PT click track, it is out of sync when I play the track back after recording it!....the same method works fine with any of my external midi devices but not with an instrument plug-in!?!?!?!.....what obvious thing am I missing here??? After checking in the manual, I experimented with Midi Offset settings....I set the global midi offset to 5 samples.....I don't know if I got lucky or it was coincidence, but it seemed to solve my problem....but now it's back doing the same thing again....which is nothing!!!....it's still out of sync......
Does anybody record virtual instruments using the PT plug-in click??????

I can't wait for someone to tell me how easy it is to fix the problem!!!!

Thanks,
Scott

[ScottFB]

Here's some additional info on how I have things set up:

BFD(stereo) is inserted on a stereo instrument track....I've also tried inserting it on a stereo aux input (same results)
I have a midi track set with BFD (stereo)... channel 1 as the output
I've record enabled the midi track and am triggering the BFD sounds with my external keyboard controller....I can hear the click track and the BFD sounds when I hit record....
I have input quantize selected
as I'm recording the track, I can see that the midi notesthat are being recorded are not hitting the grid in time although I'm playing right in time with the click....
There should be an easy fix for this but it appears (after reading several posts on the subject) that there's not one...... and that's ridiculous!!!! Don't people program drums with keyboard controllers anymore!!!

What's up with this????

[spkguitar]

If the notes that are being recorded are being quantized to the grid, then they should be in time.

To what value have you got your H/W Buffer set?
To what value are you quantizing?


BTW, I program drums with my keyboard controller all the time and have no problems whatsoever. I usually do not use input quantize, and I use the lowest buffer setting that I can when tracking (the buffer setting applies for both audio and MIDI).

[ScottFB]

Thanks for writing,,,,

On my playback engine page.....

H/W Buffer size.. 512
RTAS Procesors....1 processor (should it be set to 2 processors?)
CPU Usage limit ....99%

and my input quantiztion is set to 1/16

if I try to lower my buffer setting, I keep getting error messages to increase the buffer size

also I have 2Gigs of RAM which should be plenty.....but is it possible I could have bad RAM? or would that not have anything to do with my latency probs?

Thanks for your help!
BTW....your webpage is great!!

-Scott

[spkguitar]

RTAS Procesors....1 processor (should it be set to 2 processors?)

If you're using a dual machine, yes.

H/W Buffer size.. 512
if I try to lower my buffer setting, I keep getting error messages to increase the buffer size

512 is a little too large for tracking. Not being able to set it lower might be a different problem altogether. What drive are you using for your sessions? To what drive are your BFD samples installed? Which version of BFD? What are the rest of the details of your sessions?

The RAM shouldn't have anything to do with your latency problems.

[ScottFB]

Well, I think I figured out what I was doing wrong!........the midi track and instrument track I was trying to record 'input quantzed' midi on was set to samples instead of ticks........I've just recently upgraded to PT 7.3.1 from 6.4 and forgot about the ticks/samples option....once I switched both of those tracks to ticks, my quantizing worked properly.....my click track is also set to ticks.......since it's working now I'm assuming that's what the click track needs to be set to as well....so I guess all of the other latency stuff was irrelevant......but I'll answer your additional questions anyway because I appreciate you taking the time to help me!!
-All of my PT sessions are on an external firewire drive
-my BFD data is on a seperate internal drive
-the BFD application is on my system drive
-I'm using BFD version 1.5.46 B8 (downloaded from FXpansion after original install of v1.5.45) that upgrade fixed a lot of the original issues I was having with Pro Tools freezing up or quitting altogether when trying to use BFD.

Playback engine page:
-I now have my RTAS processors set to '2 processor'
-my CPU usage limit is set to 85%.....should it be higher? it gives me the option to set it to 99%...
-Buffer still set at 512....but.....
In general, what is the best way to determine proper buffer size? I usually only record one track at a time but I do have some sessions coming up that will require tracking multiple instruments ( up to 12)....what would be a good buffer setting for that?

Lastly, I realized yesterday that I cannot open the 'BFD Launch ReWire application' but I can open the BFD (Core Audio) and the BFD ReWire Applet......I had read that using BFD with ReWire was more efficient.....what's your opinion on that? And how do you usually use BFD? Stereo? Groups? All? Ultra? ReWire?
any suggestions are very useful to me at this stage !

Thanks so much for you help!

-Scott

[Stig Eliassen]

In general, what is the best way to determine proper buffer size?

You hear it. When you hear that the audio is slacking behind what you play, then try a lower buffer size. We're only talking about a few milliseconds of latency with 512 samples, but if you or any other musician think it's difficult to play with, then try to reduce the buffer size.