MIDI gets recorded early

[Reml@P]

Originally Posted by tonwurm

But sometimes it would be very handy to record some midi tracks in PT... but you can't get everything you want, obviously ;-)

Yeah I hear you. But then again, Pro Tools handles audio editing the best for me. It's a much more "intuitive" workflow (in that respect) compared to Logic, or Nuendo.

I don't think a single DAW is ever going to "do it all," they all have their niche.

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by alhardy

Hi and thanks for checking this out.

Every MIDI I record in realtime gets printed early.
But the audio I hear in realtime is fine, and I tested it.

TEST : Record midi on a Virtual instrument track and it's audio out to a different track at the same time

RESULT: The midi is clearly ahead of the audio.



In the attached screenshot, midi track (Blue) and audio track (purple) are recorded together in realtime while playing. You can see midi is early.

The 3rd track (pink) is recorded after the realtime performance and it aligns with midi, but midi is of course recorded early.




I tried already :
Turned off delay comp
Tried a simple midi track (not the one of the VI)
Different VI plug ins

I am on mac mini M1 and latest PT, on Big Sur.
Had this issue on a different system too.

Avid support is working on it, but no luck so far.

Hi

What's your H/W Buffer size on? This might be the same issue I was having a couple of years ago (but in truth I'd been struggling with it for years). http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=2562069&postcount=16

[PhilSchroeder]

I’ve had this problem on and off for years, but it got particularly bad with Big Sur. It became nearly impossible to compose *anything* with the MIDI continually printing early. And it makes no sense, as you’d expect system overloads to result in MIDI printing late…but instead it’s early.

I was in touch with Avid for months and I can report that they are clueless and are NOT working on it as a serious problem. I’m dismayed to read that you’re on an M1 Mac as I just upgraded to a Mac Studio myself. I was using a 2013 trashcan MP and decided it had as much to do with processing power as anything…maybe I was wrong?! But here is everything I learned:

I found it helped to watch the delay compensation activity in the session and reduce it as much as possible when tracking MIDI. If you can get it to near zero, all the better. I have a UA Thunderbolt audio system and using the UA plugs can be very problematic for Pro Tools’ speed and functionality. Especially, of course, any plugs put on the mix master…disable any plugs completely when tracking MIDI. The takeaway for me was when tracking MIDI, run as clean a session as possible, use low-energy native plugs and steer clear from the UA stuff.

If you’re deep into your session, i.e., full of plug-ins you don’t want to remove or change, and need to do more MIDI composing, I strongly recommend bouncing all of your other tracks and continuing in a new session. Of course, this is limiting if you need to add/delete time, and as a workflow killer, it sucks.

Freezing tracks is an excellent way to neutralize power draws that will impact MIDI tracking. But it’s really slow.

Equally frustrating was the amount of delay and CPU errors introduced by streaming samples, e.g., orchestral stuff from VSL, even Kontakt libraries. This seemed to be a huge contributor to the early MIDI problem. Again, freezing those tracks helped a lot.

I understand those who suggest using other programs to track MIDI but it’s not very practical, is it? I use PT for the workflows and key commands that work every time, and the MIDI implementation suits me just fine. This problem is a serious drawback, yes. But try some of what I recommend and see if that helps.

[Macsearcher]

If I may suggest....

Everyone on this thread should be calling AVID and creating escalated cases. In my experience, Avid don't pay a lot of attention to this forum and problems only get fixed when they get enough official cases logged.


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[XJENSEN]

Guys, for once and always, forget about doing MIDI work in Pro Tools. Just forget it.

[nd]

Originally Posted by XJENSEN

Guys, for once and always, forget about doing MIDI work in Pro Tools. Just forget it.

How do you work with midi when using Pro Tools?
Is there a way to use another app, and have it sync with playback of PT?

My productions are a mixture of mostly audio tracks and a few MIDI tracks. I can't believe its so difficult to get MIDI to record as its played...

[The Weed]

Have a look at Vienna Ensemble Pro.

[tonwurm]

Originally Posted by The Weed

Have a look at Vienna Ensemble Pro.

what has VEP to do with midi in PT ?

it maybe has something to do with cpu-performance, but not with creating midi tracks

[albee1952]

If midi was this bad for everyone, the DUC would be on fire over it. The fact that its not should be cause for trying to figure out why a handful of folks are having this issue. My full-time musical collaborator works more midi than most(short of soundtrack composers) and he has never mentioned this issue(I am his first call for PT problems). I'm sorry I don't have the answer, but I suspect there is one somewhere

[Dopamine]

I had that exact bug a couple years ago. It was maddening!