PT7 and midi timing?

[Eugene]

Ok, what about this:
A session without audio. Any RTAS (Kontakt or BFD lite) as drum module. Recording midi drums. Everything plays ok (seems). Add another soft synth, say, Reason. Load some patch in its sampler (using samplers seems more dramatic, because of memory usage, I guess). Start ProTools and play along with new sound. Everything`s ok while you just playing. Now try to record: you play the note and it will sound randomly delayed! In other words, Reason won`t answer in time. It`s not just Reason case. Any additional RTAS synth (sampler especially) will behave identically. You won`t notice any problems when you`re using just one. But adding others will make it worse, and worse, and worse...
To finish a midi arrangement in Protools is a nightmare here!

Sorry for my english

[Eugene]

And to DigiTechSupt..

Why are you ignoring the posts about hanging midi notes (stack note)?
They are being posted for a very long time. It happens with all existing RTAS synths, not just NI.
When it will be fixed at last?

Please, post your comments on this.

Thank you

[insanesounds]

Hello Mr. Digi.. thanks for writing...

The audio that actually comes BEFORE the MIDI note is waaaay more prevalent than the ones that come after the MIDI note. I know MIDI is not a sample accurate protocol, but I'm not talking milliseconds. I'm talking variances from -765 samples to + 250 samples - that's audio coming .026 seconds prior to the actual MIDI note and almost the same coming after the MIDI note and that's only a two bar phrase of quarter notes at 120BPM! Not to mention if I slave a sequenced song from a, for example, Triton keyboard, to PT via MIDI beat clock and just play it, well good lord does the timing sound horrible, yet when the Triton is the master and the producer just hits play, it sounds pretty dead on.

I've had the same custom system since ver. 5.3 thru 6.7 with a midi i/o since 6.4 or so. Have a DELL 670 per DIGI specs with a midi i/o interface since 6.9 and now 7.0 and MIDI timing was waaay better back in the day. Regardless, this is not to bash, but to find out why it exists (is my system the anomoly - although not from what the other users are saying) and do I have to run Cakewalk or some other 200 dollar program to take care of my MIDI issues on my 30k HD system?! (I added that for effect, but it's quite true). What do you suggest? If you actually can't reproduce this, then, if you could turn me on to a tech that can possibly address my issues, it would be super appreciated. Thanks much.

[DigiTechSupt]

And to DigiTechSupt..

Why are you ignoring the posts about hanging midi notes (stack note)?
They are being posted for a very long time. It happens with all existing RTAS synths, not just NI.
When it will be fixed at last?

Please, post your comments on this.

Thank you

Eugene - we don't ignore posts, unfortunately there just isn't enough time to respond to every post. When we see issues, we will investigate, make suggestions and reply to the post when necessary. With the hundreds or thousands of posts that are made on the DUC every day, to attempt to reply to all of them would be nearly impossible.

If you can point me to the specific thread you're referring to, I'll take a look at it. I do know that several hung note issues were addressed in Pro Tools 7 and with updates from 3rd party plug-in developers. I will try to address any other problems that are still occurring, if at all possible.

[DigiTechSupt]

Nikki - Thanks for the concise information. I'm going to take a look at this as soon as possible.

[DigiTechSupt]

Nikki - Could you tell me which RTAS instruments and versions you were using?

[Eugene]

http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...&Number=859853
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...&Number=847170
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...&Number=816510
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...&Number=848469

If you can point me to the specific thread you're referring to, I'll take a look at it.

And please, pay attention on issue I`ve descibed above - major for me.

Thank you

[insanesounds]

Hey Eugene, I feel your pain. I finally bit the bullet and stayed on hold to talk to tech support. As per their request, I emailed a small session with rendered audio next to the original midi tracks along with my system setup, hardware, etc. I believe this is the crux of the problems that we (and others obviously) are experiencing. Tech Support's answer as to whether there is a MIDI timing issue with ProTools is, "We haven't confirmed conclusively either way if there is an issue." Haha.. so, my feeling is that most people are just working around the problem using other gear, etc. to get the job done and not complaining to DIGI in droves about it - hence, no action. He said he should have some info by next week. I will post a msg as soon as I get some more info from DIGI.

[insanesounds]

As far as hanging MIDI notes and lockups - until I got the midi i/o, this was an ongoing intermittent problem. I had an M-Audio midisport 8X8 and a MOTU MTP AV. I never get hanging midi notes now with Digi's I/O. I do not use RTAS instruments though as I dont like using RTAS plugs in the TDM session. With moderate usage, it just slows down screen redraws and system response - I also heard of some issues (like what you must be experiencing). I run my software samplers on a separate computer. This is why my only concern is MIDI timing and MIDI beat clock timing. Just an FYI.

[nikki-k]

Nikki - Could you tell me which RTAS instruments and versions you were using?

I tried it with SYnth One (RTAS version, McDSP), Minimoog (Arturia), and Pro53 (NI).
I figured Kontakt would not be a fair test subject.

With ADC off, I am getting varying results of lateness.

As an example, I used 8 "hits," with 2 per measure at 120bpm, adc long, 128 H/W, 2 processor (HT enabled P4), DAE lev 2, 85% cpu allow, 192voice/6 dsp. One mono audio track, one stereo audio track, one stereo instrument track, with output set to stereo buss; other end of stereo buss set to input for the single stereo audio track. No master faders, no other inserts or sends being utilized. I used Synth One 2-voice for this report, since it is XP, RTAS and TDM capable, and has been around awhile.

Synth One RTAS is reporting 260 samples of delay (Ctrl+Click vol/pk/delay indicator to show delay amount; or, turn on ADC and reported delay is there, identicle amount).
With ADC off, the printed audio bursts begin anywhere from 130 samples to 300 samples late. Late is expected, but a consistent amount would also be expected with a software instrument, with no samples being triggered...no?

Switch Synth One to TDM version, and reported delay is 3 samples. Lateness of print declines to random numbers between 30-40, with 35 samples appearing often.

Turn ADC on, and keep the TDM version.
Each printed hit is now 33 samples late.

Switch to RTAS version...and the fun revs up
Now the hits print early...anywhere from 10-100 samples early.

So far, RTAS all seem to produce random timing results. TDM with ADC on seems the best bet.
I can cope with this fun/madness...I simply use RTP now and use an appropriate number. The randomness that then surrounds each beat is close enough that I am happy 99% of the time, and also adds some (unintended?) "human feel."

I am rarely encountering stuck notes. With a USB keyboard contorller, it will happen every now and then, mostly during flurries of notes as I play, when a few notes happen to slur a certain way. During MIDI playback of passages, I cannot even recall the last stuck note, during or upon stop.

Overall, I am pretty happy. Precision would certainly be welcome, and I would certainly hope Digi would opt to produce a bottom line for these issues. I want to find time to fire up Nuendo 3 and see if it suffers from these things as well.

While I do have a Kurzweil K2500XS and several other dinosaur synths lying around, I do not have any of them running audio anywhere, and it is physically difficult for me to route new cables and such right now, or I would love to see what external hardware via MIDI does.