Sonar X1 and timing

so a friend of mine got me going (as good friends do!) regarding timing.
specifically, regarding this: http://www.innerclocksystems.com/New%20ICS%20Sync-Gen%20II%20Pro.html
i admit i havent really been bothered too much about it, and frankly havent noticed timing problems that much. maybe this is because until final mix time, most of my tracks are 90% midi with the occasional bounced to audio track.
 
anyway, im using a fireface 800, set at 256 samples. for midi im using a midisport 8x8 with current drivers.
 
doing a little impromptu test of quantized clicks, i noted that my audio recordings are about ~350 samples behind the midi click. my asio reported latency is about 352 samples on the output side. i suppose this makes sense. if i recorded all of my midi tracks into audio, i guess this would be a non issue. or at least less of an issue. i rarely use VSTi's, but i understand that the virus TI (and many others im sure) are sample accurate.
 
QUESTION 1: what, if anything, does Sonar X1 do to correct for this?
i assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Sonar takes care of this by delaying midi tracks by the right amount. maybe thats wrong.
 
QUESTION 2: what, if anything, can i do to maximize the accuracy of timing on my system? is there anything aside from dragging all my audio backwards by ~350 samples?
 
now of course this is not mentioning possible jitter that surely exists. again, i think that some of this is negligible. but for the robotic electronic music that im doing, im probably not paying close enough attention.

You have to manually adjust your record latency. There's been a couple of threads explaining it, and someone even posted the test sample files to use, but I can't seem to find them.

Basically what you do is ...

Make a test file in Sound Forge using the tone generator. Make it about 20 seconds.

Import it in to Sonar and drag it to around 10 on the timeline. This allows room for any offset of the recording you make of the test tone.

Take one of the audio outputs that go to one of your monitors and run it to an input. You're making an audio loop to record the tone.

Create an audio track and record the test file through the loop.

Zoom in on the track you recorded and zoom to the sample level and drag the edge of the clip to the first sample. Then make the test tone track and the recorded track visible and count how many samples they differ and input that number in to the Reported Latency box.

I do this every time I do a fresh install. It seems my Fast Track Ultra is off by 323 samples every time I do it.

+1

Guitarhacker


My test is.... "can I hear the latency? "

If so... find a solution

If not.... proceed


There will be latency in just about everything, even on a live stage due to the laws of physics relating to distance and speed of sound. 

Without getting too obsessive..... if I can not hear it I ignore it.  No need to go looking for gremlins..... I have better things to be doing in the studio. 

I started reading this thread and at first I'm thinking, "364 samples? is that something we can hear??" I thought Sonar's job was to look after me with these things, so I'm glad the last couple of posts confirm my beliefs. Music should not be perfect anyways, unless it's to be played in a shopping mall or an elevator. :}

sequencer + usb port + midi interface + midi speed limit of 3,906.25 bytes per second + time for external hardware to process the midi data and generate a sound = latency until sound actually appears on your audio interfaces input connector

That is in addition to the audio hardware latency. :)

Not at the expense of a) not making music, b) obsessing over minutiae c) ignoring the fact that trying to achieve zero latency is a physical impossibility

Guitarhacker

I'm as happy as a pig in a mud puddle with 8ms.

I can't stand anything over 4 ~ 5ms. At 6ms I have to start freezing tracks to free up resources.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about real time latency, I'm talking about record latency, and you don't hear that until you play your project back.

Sonar is supposed to be able to calculate record latency automatically and compensate, but it's not accurate on some sound cards, that's why Sonar gives you the option to do it manually.

I looked up some numbers. 1ms is roughly 44samples. If my Fast Track Ultra is off by 323samples, that's roughly 7ms. Add your real time latency and it's possible you are in the double digit ms range during playback.

Danny Danzi posted a video a few years back showing how to adjust the record latency. It was an excellent video but I haven't been able to find a link.

Sorry for not explaining myself clearer. We are talking about two different things.

Thanks,

Bub