X1 Studio, midi latency when recording, and can't record automation from midi tracks

Hello all,

I've been going over posts in this forum and others in the last couple of days trying to find an answer to my issue, but have yet to find anything that works.

Basically, when I try to record or render my midi tracks to audio, there is a huge latency, and it won't playback the automation--well in some cases it will, but really choppy. The automation plays fine when I'm not recording, but when trying to render everything out, . . . I have Sonar 7 as well, and have never had a problem in this area. To be honest I wish I had done more homework before buying X1.

Experimenting I've tried using the read\write automation buttons on the tracks, tried adjusting buffers (3.9ms with ASIO drivers). It's weird though because it's almost like an offset.

Needless to say I'm quite confused. I've got VSL Special Edition on it's way (hopefully will arrive in the next few days) and I'd like to figure this out before too long.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Cheers
Darrin

Both X1 and S7 are running on the same hardware, yeah. I actually just built a new computer. Never had these issues on my old system either running S7.  Both are x64.

I'm running EWQLSO Silver, so effects. I set up a test file to experiment with. A four bar tune, a cc11 automation envelope. Nothing else in the file.
Visually the sound kicks in at almost exactly 1 bar after the first bar is played. Never varies with buffer change, nor even with tempo change. I'm beginning to think it's a built in offset somewhere. But that doesn't explain why the automation doesn't like to record. What's weird though is if I don't bother with the automation, and just draw in cc's in the piano roll, there's no issue. It will record all that info just fine. I haven't tried recording midi data from an external source though because I don't have a midi controller keyboard or anything, I do all notation.

However, the metronome is fine between 100bmp to 120bmp, but if I up the tempo too much, then the metronome is not in sync. AT 200 bpm the midi note starts a 10.5 seconds, and the sounds comes in at 11.7 at 1.2 seconds delay.

My recording Midi buffer is 64, audio is 2.9  sorry not 3.9 under ASIO, at 128 samples. I've had the audio driver WMD as well, and no change. Played with the buffer through that ) greyed out under ASIO, though I played with the buffer on my Delta 66.

I do have X1c installed. Just installed that last night. Man I'm puzzled, heh. In the end I guess ultimately it doesn't matter, as if I'm recording a big piece, if the sound starts at bar 3 where the notes do, or it doesn't won't effect the recording. But it is an oddity that bugs me. The automation problem is actually a bit more vexing. Though I do have an old Roland JV 2080 (no midi cable at the moment, thanks to dropped support for analogue game\midi ports--thanks Microsoft :P heh) and wonder if this offset will effect recording from that as well. Though I suppose if it does I can always record those tracks separately. :P

I'm running Windows 7, i7 960 Quad core, 12 gigs of ram, with an M-Audio Delta 66 sound card. My previous system, which with Sonar 7 I never had any issues was a Core 2 Duo at 2.6 GHz with a sad 2 gigs of ram, heh. And of coarse my Delta 66.

I've read a lot of people have had midi latency issues regarding keyboard controllers and drum machines too. I wonder if this is related?

Cheers, and thanks, even if you can't help me. A lot to read through :P

Dunno. Found a few threads, all pointing to issues with count-in, but no real solutions. It seemed at first that M-Audio interfaces were often involved, but that's not consistent either, and might just reflect their popularity. Here are a few of those thread:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2362636

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=695583

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=720334

You might try PMing some of the OPs, and seieng if they ever found a solution.

I found these by Googling "One Measure Bar Late site:forum.cakewalk.com". There are probably more.

mike_mccueA single process ends up where it ends up, but it seems like the mix engine, with all its parallel processing would need to juggle everything so that it buffers up and finally gets synced on output. Even if it all happens faster than real time it seems like the goal is for everything to end up at the same place in the end.

That may be true. I certainly don't have a detailed understanding of how synth and FX output is handled with offline rendering, but I would have thought that SONAR basically just requests/processes each plug-in's output for each buffer period (or more if BounceBufSizeMsec in AUD.INI is not 0), and sums them all together,  sample for sample. I'm thinking it shouldn't matter that a plug-in needs an extra read-ahead buffer in real time because Sonar gives it all the time it needs when working offline.


The analogy would be that I send e-mail to ten musicians, asking them all to send me audio clips of their parts of the chorus from measures 33 through 40 of my collaboration. The first guy sends his 10 minutes later, and the last guy (usually the drummer ) doesn't respond for two days. But that doesn't matter, cause I'm not working in real time, and I know that all the measure 33s start at the same time, so I just line their start times up and away I go.

Brundlefly, thanks very much for the help! It seems to be the metronome count in indeed for both issues. I turned that off, and it starts where it's supposed to when recording no problem, and also records the automation. Weird that that would effect the automation, but whatever! Mind that was a super simple track. I will have to try it out with a real project.

Thanks again, and to the others as well.

Cheers all
Darrin

By the way, does anyone know how to make paragraph breaks show up in replies? No matter what I do, I can't get my sentences separated, like my reply above.