MIDI notes out of sync caused by Delay Compensation?

[Markrosoft]

Did anyone have any luck figuring out what was going on here? I've been experiencing this for many many years and am heartened to finally see that I'm not crazy but disheartened to see this is a problem with pro tools.

It's always been remarkable to me how much better midi I record sounds in Ableton. When I play it back, it has the feel it had when I recorded it. In Pro Tools, it NEVER does (and never has, to be honest). I'm convinced midi somehow get slipped up early in PT. And as people have noted -- I'd rather have things LATE than early.

Also, I think the amount it slips the midi up is not constant. I'm not sure I can prove this, but if this is the case it makes it hard to just slide everything back and then have it in time.

I'm going to submit a ticket (for the 4th time) but I'm curious if anyone on this thread figured out what was happening for them. Hope people are having better luck than me but this has been a constant issue for me.

(I'm using PT HD Native 2021.6.0 with an HD Omni on a mac pro trashcan on Catalina)

[Starcrash]

Originally Posted by Markrosoft

Did anyone have any luck figuring out what was going on here? I've been experiencing this for many many years and am heartened to finally see that I'm not crazy but disheartened to see this is a problem with pro tools.

It's always been remarkable to me how much better midi I record sounds in Ableton. When I play it back, it has the feel it had when I recorded it. In Pro Tools, it NEVER does (and never has, to be honest). I'm convinced midi somehow get slipped up early in PT. And as people have noted -- I'd rather have things LATE than early.

Also, I think the amount it slips the midi up is not constant. I'm not sure I can prove this, but if this is the case it makes it hard to just slide everything back and then have it in time.
)

I have NOT had any luck with this and so I've been learning to use Ableton for my music which is awesome but also kind of ridiculous since I'm a long time PT user and I use it 8-10 hours a day, every day for my post-production work.


Here's my ridiculous workaround:
- start click track
- tap to the beat with whatever VI I'm using until I feel confident that I am tapping a tight rhythm to the click
- render that MIDI file using the Commit function
- visually compare the MIDI notes to the rendered notes to the grid and make a calculation of how much I need to nudge the notes to make the rendered notes line up with the grid
- make a custom nudge value with that calculated offset
- THEN... I can finally start tracking and I nudge by the offset after every record pass
- FUN!

[XJENSEN]

Same here. I picked up Logic for composition. There was certainly a learning curve to go through, but now I regret I didn't do it earlier. The MIDI features there are amazing, things Pro Tools can only dream of. And the ease of it. Smart Quantization, Smart Tempo, MIDI scripting, MIDI effects, no timing problems, ... Now I'm getting to a point I start using Logic more and more for recording as well. It's so much fun! That's why I said earlier, and I meant it, just start using another program for MIDI, and thank me later.

[Markrosoft]

Maybe it is finally time to try logic. I'm a little afraid of starting from scratch with a new DAW but it would be nice to have things work well.

I can't believe how long this bug has existed (at least... 6 years for me?) and how Avid continue to not address it. Your recording not being in time?! It's like, come on... that's your ONE job.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by Markrosoft

Maybe it is finally time to try logic. I'm a little afraid of starting from scratch with a new DAW but it would be nice to have things work well.

I can't believe how long this bug has existed (at least... 6 years for me?) and how Avid continue to not address it. Your recording not being in time?! It's like, come on... that's your ONE job.

To be fair to Avid, Pro Tools really hasn't seen itself as occupying the "DAW for composition" space. PT has always been the go to DAW for pro level mixing and post-production. That's probably why they seem so much further behind in that area. Logic and (to some extent) Ableton, were put together with MIDI composing in mind far more than audio mixing and post-production. If Avid ever beefed up the MIDI applications to be on par with, say, Logic, that coupled with PT's audio mixing/editing would probably make PT the only DAW anyone would ever need.

[XJENSEN]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

To be fair to Avid, Pro Tools really hasn't seen itself as occupying the "DAW for composition" space. PT has always been the go to DAW for pro level mixing and post-production. That's probably why they seem so much further behind in that area. Logic and (to some extent) Ableton, were put together with MIDI composing in mind far more than audio mixing and post-production. If Avid ever beefed up the MIDI applications to be on par with, say, Logic, that coupled with PT's audio mixing/editing would probably make PT the only DAW anyone would ever need.

Yes, that's right. They once portrayed a vision of evolving towards a creation-centereded application, but then showed no effort of adding but the most basic MIDI functions. At this time you can't even work properly with MIDI regions, just a simple cut-and-paste makes you lose events that are not on the grid.

As it stands, Pro Tools just is an application for recording and cutting up audio, really.

[Markrosoft]

Yes, and this isn't advanced midi stuff we're talking about -- this is literally the BARE minimum: if you record midi in pro tools it doesn't end up where you recorded it!

I've spent the past day doing test after test and the results are VERY clear: When I record midi, pro tools slides the midi notes earlier.

Here's the test that proves it (please feel free to replicate it and report back!):

1. Set your hardware buffer to 256. (This is a reasonable setting and a good place to run the test).
2. Make a click track. Add a send to it (set to unity) going to Bus 1
3. Make an instrument track with a basic instrument on it (that uses little CPU). I used Boom. Add a send on this track (set to unity) going to Bus 2.
4. Make a stereo audio track whose input is bus 1-2
5. Record arm your instrument track and your audio track.
6. Record a bit of you playing along to the click track.

Now look at the results. When I look at the audio track, I see the click track is perfectly on the grid and the *audio* of my instrument track is pretty close.

BUT then when I look at where the recorded *midi* notes show up, they are significantly ahead of the the audio!

But wait, you say, perhaps there's some latency in the midi instrument playing the note and it takes some time after the midi note is hit for the instrument to play the sound and then send that sound to an audio track? To test this, we need to re-record the audio (but NOT the midi) as a way to see what playback will sounds like. Playback should sound just like it did when I recorded it, no? To test this:

1. un-record arm the instrument track -- I'm leaving the previous performance exactly how it was.
2. create a new playlist on the audio track
3. Then rerecord on the new playlist to see what the midi sounds like now.
4. Now compare the two playlists!

Sure enough, the instrument audio has moved up and significantly ahead of where it was when recorded live. This is not some latency in the midi device -- it's a bug in pro tools.

Here's an image of the track I recorded when playing **live**:
https://ibb.co/X7vzSQb
If you look at the audio track, you can see I'm a tiiiny bit behind the beat. This is what it sounded/felt like when I played along to the click track. BUT.... the midi note is WAY ahead of the beat!

And here's what a recording of **playback** looks like:
https://ibb.co/3WxzssB
You can see that the audio of my performance is now WAY ahead of the beat. The audio in playback is exactly where the midi note is but nowhere close to where I played it. In other words, when I recorded the midi, I was a tiiiiny bit behind the beat but when I play it back, the audio is now waaaaaay ahead of the beat.

This is CRAZY. This isn't a missing advanced midi feature. It means recording midi in pro tools is BROKEN. I really urge other people to run this test to see if I'm missing something. But this has been my subjective experience in Pro Tools for a long time (and not in any other DAW) and this test proves it's actually happening. If this is real, it really means one should NEVER record midi in Pro Tools (if they want playback to sound like what they just played).

The amount seems to fluctuate and definitely gets higher at higher buffer settings and lower at lower settings. But it seems a little random and hard to adjust for. At 32 samples, it seems to be off 60 samples. At 1024 samples it seems to be off 1283 samples.

Apologies for the long post/rant but again, I urge people to run this same test or tell me what is flawed in my methodology. Thanks for your help!

[spinsong]

This is something that was caused by the onset of virtual instruments dating back to QuickTime instruments. There’s an inherent delay caused by the processing involved with emulating the instrument. There are various solutions. Most are hardware based. It’s not just settings in any workstation for that matter. Track your performance and slide it since it involves drums it’ll snap if quantized correctly.


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[Markrosoft]

I respectfully disagree. If there’s an inherent delay caused by the processing involved with emulating the instrument, then wouldn't that delay be there when you're playing the virtual instrument live AND when it's being played by the recorded midi notes during playback? If that were the case, the two images I posted would be identical. But they aren't. There's a TINY delay between the midi note and the audio in playback. But there's a HUGE discrepancy in where the midi note was rendered by Pro Tools and where I played it. The midi is AHEAD of where I played it... that's not latency! It's coming in too soon.

I PROMISE you, I'm not playing ahead of the beat yet pro tools is putting the midi notes ahead of the beat EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. That's not a latency problem -- it's some weird over-compensation Pro Tools is doing incorrectly. No other DAW behaves this way -- so this isn't something inherent to virtual instruments.

[spinsong]

It might have something to do with your controller. You never gave information about whether it’s usb or midi transmission. There could be some compensation in place by protools depending on your controller. It’s highly likely. Also, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a universal midi setting that was also mentioned earlier. Offset that.


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