Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

I am trying to print a single MIDI note to audio using a bus. The kick drum from xPand is showing up as late when zooming in on the audio that gets printed from MIDI. I am using an HP Omen 17 Laptop and I have the Universal Audio x8p interface. Is there any way to get the MIDI to print as accurately to the grid as audio?

Re: Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

Until you can get a more in depth answer you could try creating an audio track and dragging the MIDI clip directly to the audio track as a workaround until you find out the cause or if this is a known issue.

I usually only use the drag MIDI to audio track or commit so don't know the full answer but have read about similar issues before.

Re: Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

Indeed, if your midi is on the grid, print it and if the print is off the grid, I would use Tab to Transient to find the first note, separate the clip at the first note and then snap that to the grid. This whole routine will take mere seconds:o

Re: Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

Thanks the reply. I tried using the "tab to transient" but this is considering the beginning of the beat as the transient and not the future place where the wave begins to rise, so I would have to use slip mode to get rid of the flat line in the front, and then snap the clip back to the grid. I would not want to do this for every thing I do in Pro Tools. If I created an original song entirely based on MIDI, I would not want to have to do all of this manual manipulation to end up with a flawless recording.


If a sound is supposed to start precisely at the start of a beat, then it should.


I have an open support case with Avid, and we have yet to figure out this potentially "late" audio from MIDI.


Take a look at the attached image to see for yourself.

Re: Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

Hard to make out much from that screenshot. Unfortunately image sharing on DUC is near worthless with the horrible image downscaling (Avid should have backed this off years ago). It's better to post your images on a file or image sharing site and place the link here. While at it why not just share the session? ... which will answer all the questions about how exactly you are getting the VI signal to the track, e.g. a send, track output, etc.

You also don't say anywhere how much exact delay you are seeing... so what is that in ms and # samples? Use the cursor/select length measurement to measure this exactly. The # samples often gives a clue of possible causes.

With Xpand!2 I see MIDI note to start of waveform latency of what looks like around a few (less than 5) samples in a 48kHz session using Xpand!2 with a KicksMenu drum. But you have to be very careful what the waveforms are doing at very low level. And individual sample waveforms in Xpand will vary. But either way a totally trivial amount. You have to be careful to look for the subtle start of the waveform, i.e. fully vertically zoom all the way in on the waveform and look at it there. And turn the Xpand!2 Attack setting fully down or it can give the illusion the waveform starts later than it does. I am not running the Hall or Chorus FX, not sure the Hall has a pre-delay or not. You can also compare other VI, say MiniGrand that may have more consistent/clear note start, but even there if you do not zoom in vertically far enough on the waveform you might several tens or more samples (still not a significant latency... but again we have no idea about what latency you are actually seeing/measuring).

There are much better drum VIs than Xpand!2, especially ToonTracks EZDrummer and Superior Drummer. I highly recommend starting with EZDrummer.

Re: Printing MIDI to Audio has Latency
 

And make sure you do not have MIDI track offset or Global MIDI playback offset value applied here. Both described in the Pro Tools Reference Guide. And all that is orthogonal to/separate from Plugin delay compensation... plugin delay compensation won't help you here, at least not with the simple test you are doing. Those MIDI offset settings do give you a way of correcting for MIDI latency from note to sample output... but you should not be getting significant latency there anyhow.