Supposedly Cubase has DirectMusic support. Its the only one I know of. Steinberg was probably more motivated to try it because Cubase has had notoriously bad midi timing for years.

The reason Microsoft is dropping DirectMusic has nothing to do with this issue. DirectMusic is this huge mammoth of a development platform for developing midi music for games, which nobody uses now. MS has provided a new mammoth development platform for that which is all audio based, no midi. At some point they have written off the DirectMusic mammoth and there are very very few people utilizing this one little small corner of it to drive their midi sequencers more accurately. So it will be dropped.

The best thing to do related to nudging Microsoft is to plead with them to include the midi queuing capabilities into the basic OS, rather than relying on DirectMusic and trying to support that whole mammoth. MS needs the equivalent of CoreMidi.

Strangely though, if you look around the web, you will find VERY few forum posts, etc.. of people asking about or complaining about midi timing at this level. No wonder MS is not paying any attention to the issue. My feeling is that technical people feel its good enough now. Fine musicians don't feel its good enough now, but they don't have enough technical understanding to get into the kinds of discussions we've gotten into in this thread. So get out there, visit the WDM development forums. Speak your opinion. Go to the Microsoft related usenet groups. Write emails to that department if you can find the email address. Etc..

But, I have to say again, 2ms is actually quite good. I doubt its going to be better than 1ms anytime in the next 10 years without expensive hardware timestamping we have discussed. Most of you cannot hear 2ms. If you hear horrible timing happening, then either your setup could be optimized with a better midi device/driver or there is something else going on. Remember also that if you want to make your computer more responsive to realtime timing, there will be a performance penalty in other areas such as audio.

ORIGINAL: dstrenz
BTW, another test I did which really emphasizes the jitter: In a small project with say 4 midi tracks and 4 audio tracks, record a midi bongo groove then play it back. Sounds terrible.

Did you disable the metronome? Still terrible? Which plugin you using for the bongos? can you render a wav file of the terrible result and post that along with the midi file?

BTW - in case anyone is interested. I have it from a very reliable MOTU source that the windows driver for the MOTU midi interfaces DOES NOT support hardware midi timestamping as of right now. Apparently this feature has only been supported by MacOS applications that specifically support it. FWIW. It appears to me, that basically hardware midi timestamping is not an option on windows at this time.

In my book that makes the parallel port interfaces king of the hill on windows.

ok, back to previously interrupted discussion...

This may have been answered... couldn't find it though...

Does the USB 2.0 spec inpropve the 1 ms resolution issue?

I have a parallel motu midi box and since my printers are on the network an open p-port. Is this a viable alternative to USB? Or am I missing the joke?

ggg

No USB 2.0 will not get below 1ms. That constraint is imposed by the windows MM timer. But a USB2 interface, if its well implemented, may help ensure that you're getting pretty consistently within the 1-2ms window.

ORIGINAL: dewdman42

BTW - in case anyone is interested. I have it from a very reliable MOTU source that the windows driver for the MOTU midi interfaces DOES NOT support hardware midi timestamping as of right now. Apparently this feature has only been supported by MacOS applications that specifically support it. FWIW. It appears to me, that basically hardware midi timestamping is not an option on windows at this time.

Thanks for the information. I asked various MOTU sources repeatedly about that, when the 'MTS' MOTU products first came out - and never got a good answer. I'd been thinking about getting the 5x5 'lite' USB interface (it's around $140 or so, I think) -- but if it doesn't support MTS on Windows, there's no point.

Just to reinforce what you said earlier - 2 milliseconds max jitter should be fine for most people. Jitter at that level is really pretty subtle. If you're hearing serious jitter - then, most likely, something is seriously wrong in your system configuration.

- Jim

ORIGINAL: Jim Wright
Just to reinforce what you said earlier - 2 milliseconds max jitter should be fine for most people. Jitter at that level is really pretty subtle.

Yep. I think anyone who feels they need <1ms midi resolution with accuracy should invest in a hardware sequencer. 1-2ms is fine for most of us. Over about 5ms is intolerable, for me anyway.

If you're hearing serious jitter - then, most likely, something is seriously wrong in your system configuration./

I think anything under 2ms should just be ignored for the time being. Anything over 2ms can probably be fixed by most people.

The longer discrepancies could be one of several things I think we've identified through this thread:

- Could be system problem in general, though this seems to be more and more rare IMHO.

- Could be a midi interface is being used that does not have the greatest device driver.

- Could be the buggy Sonar metronome (try turning it off, if that fixes the problem, then contact Cakewalk and wail!)

- Could be that the soft instrument plugin is not using midi timestamps correctly. IMHO this is most likely the fault of the plugin in some way, but there is no way for end-users to know for sure whether its the plugin mishandling the midi timestamps; or if Sonar is somehow not feeding it with correct timestamps. However, I tend to think that if Sonar were messing this up, there would be a lot more people kicking and screaming. I believe in this situation, the plugin is probably to blame. If raising the audio buffer size causes it to get worse, this is likely a problem. Try different modes of rendering audio, including real-time mixing to audio, real time freeze, fast freeze, etc. Try with different audio buffer sizes. Eventually you should be able to get it to work right. Then contact the plugin developer and wail!

- Could be that the soft inst is using disk streaming and can't keep up with stuff. I would think that fast bounce or freeze would not be susceptible to disk streaming starvation, but in any case, if your plugin uses disk streaming, try turning it off or all of the different audio rendering approaches mentioned above. Try a larger audio buffer size. Then contact your plugin developer and wail!

- Could be some other bug in the soft inst that mis calculates timing. This could happen due to any number of buggy reasons including threading, Multiple CPU issues, etc.. If you have multiple CPU's, try turning off MP support to see what happens, etc.. If you can identify a focused problem, then contact your plugin developer and wail.

I can't think of any other things that have been identified recently.

ORIGINAL: dewdman42

ORIGINAL: Jim Wright
Just to reinforce what you said earlier - 2 milliseconds max jitter should be fine for most people. Jitter at that level is really pretty subtle.

Yep. I think anyone who feels they need <1ms midi resolution with accuracy should invest in a hardware sequencer. 1-2ms is fine for most of us. Over about 5ms is intolerable, for me anyway.

Without getting into my credentials, I'll just say that I'm fairly certain I hear, and feel, the 2-millisecond jitter. To a certain extent, I have probably lowered my standards and forced myself to adapt to the way it feels and sounds, so that I can manage to get through MIDI sessions without losing my mind, but I would love to have it feel better. I actually was already thinking about getting a hardware sequencer, based in large part on this discussion - but then I lose all of the fantastic graphical editing tools I've grown accustomed to. Even though we're a niche market and a small percentage of Microsoft's market share, we still have a right to request that manufacturers create the tools that we need to operate at the best of our ability - and it seems that a software sequencer like SONAR, with the timing integrity of a traditional hardware sequencer but the graphical editing capabilities we've all gotten used to using, would be one such tool. I would consider going to a Pro Tools TDM system, even with it's bloated price tag, to take advantage of what people have described in the way of Digi's MIDI I/O interface's timing stability - but I just don't like working in Pro Tools as much.

ORIGINAL: RTGraham

Without getting into my credentials, I'll just say that I'm fairly certain I hear, and feel, the 2-millisecond jitter.

That's why I said most people. Not all people. There are a very very few golden ear'd people that might hear it. Most people will not. and I would argue that even the golden eared people may only hear it when they are using their hands to play a midi instrument and hearing the jittering latency in some way. People listening to the track will not hear it for all intensive purposes. Anyway, haven't we barked up this tree long enough?? We keep going round and round in circles. Sub 2ms is not solvable on Windows right now. Write your senator and get over it. ;-)

To a certain extent, I have probably lowered my standards and forced myself to adapt to the way it feels and sounds, so that I can manage to get through MIDI sessions without losing my mind, but I would love to have it feel better. I actually was already thinking about getting a hardware sequencer, based in large part on this discussion

if you truly are that sensitive, then I would definitely consider it. Though note that someone else showed that their hardware sequencer was also jittering around a fair bit in the 1-2ms range. So its hard to say. I think the Akai MPC is well liked because it has its own groove templates that give a famous MPC swing to the tracks done with it. But hey...maybe they are tighter. I'm not aware of any critical tests that have been done to compare.

Like I said, if you are that sensitive, its certainly worth a try to get one of those and try it. Pick up an MPC-4000, a Roland groove box, or a Yamaha QY700 if you want more than 92ppqn. I've thought about getting one also, just because I'm paranoid about it. But in the end, I think its overkill, $500 I'd rather save for something else. Still I wouldn't mind trying one a while to see if I can feel a difference or not.

record the tracks on the hardware box. Once its completely ready for soft instrument rendering, then import the midi file to sonar and finish it there. The question is, will the timing differences be worth the extra cost and hassle factor? I know I probably won't feel satisfied until I try it myself to find out.

Even though we're a niche market and a small percentage of Microsoft's market share, we still have a right to request that manufacturers create the tools that we need to operate at the best of our ability - and it seems that a software sequencer like SONAR, with the timing integrity of a traditional hardware sequencer but the graphical editing capabilities we've all gotten used to using, would be one such tool.

Yea, I think most of us would. Keep begging Microsoft.

I would consider going to a Pro Tools TDM system, even with it's bloated price tag, to take advantage of what people have described in the way of Digi's MIDI I/O interface's timing stability - but I just don't like working in Pro Tools as much.

Did someone say TDM midi is more stable? Is that measured? I would not expect it to be any more stable. ProTools has always been about audio and midi as an afterthought. I really doubt its a single bit more stable then everything we've been talking about.

ORIGINAL: RTGraham

ORIGINAL: dewdman42

ORIGINAL: Jim Wright
Just to reinforce what you said earlier - 2 milliseconds max jitter should be fine for most people. Jitter at that level is really pretty subtle.

Yep. I think anyone who feels they need <1ms midi resolution with accuracy should invest in a hardware sequencer. 1-2ms is fine for most of us. Over about 5ms is intolerable, for me anyway.

Without getting into my credentials, I'll just say that I'm fairly certain I hear, and feel, the 2-millisecond jitter. To a certain extent, I have probably lowered my standards and forced myself to adapt to the way it feels and sounds, so that I can manage to get through MIDI sessions without losing my mind, but I would love to have it feel better. I actually was already thinking about getting a hardware sequencer, based in large part on this discussion - but then I lose all of the fantastic graphical editing tools I've grown accustomed to. Regardless of whether we're a niche market or a small percentage of Microsoft's market share, we still have a right to request that manufacturers create the tools that we need to operate at the best of our ability - and it seems that a software sequencer like SONAR, with the timing integrity of a traditional hardware sequencer but the graphical editing capabilities we've all gotten used to using, would be one such tool. I would consider going to a Pro Tools TDM system, even with it's bloated price tag, to tae advantage of what people have described in the way of Digi's MIDI I/O interface's timing stability - but I just don't like working in Pro Tools as much.

Man do I agree with the having to adapt part of your statement.
We would never have tolerated errors in timing of the sort I am dealing with now, to be introduced in the shows of old. Much less recordings. My brother and I (I'll just say he is a exceptionally talented drummer that can lock to the clock and not vary) used to argue over shifting latin percussion tracks 1 or 2 ticks behind the beat. That was when we used the MC500 for live work. If someone would like to do the math. Tempo around say 118, 4/4 time, 96ppqn. The difference should be noticeable to most musicans.

You guys need to check out something like the Yamaha Tyros. Now before everybody laughs me of the board for saying check out a cheesy arranger, let me tell you why you should.

IT ain't chessy.
Stunning voices. Well over a thousand of them.
Mockup songs unbelieveably fast, record it in the on board seq and then open the file in Sonar.
Tons of styles freely available in addition to being able to create your own.
Absolutely rock solid capture of whatever you played.
1920 TPM
And about 50 or more reasons that nobody would probably pay attention to anyway, so I won't mention them.

I have had mine 4 years and when I get sick of all these problems, I turn it on and just start recording something new, hassle free.