Midi off time --help please--

Please, give your system/soundcard specs. What driver mode are you using?

It's worth the time to put your specs in the signature, like most here have done. That way you don't need to rewrite them every time. That's the most important info when trying to solve most problems.

 I tried finding what chip-set for this machine (laptop) is and it only says in the ASUS specs for audio is "EAX Advanced HD 5.0, THX TruStudio". And If I look in X2 Edit> Preferences> audio> it only lists as Realtek HD Audio. Can you help me find further specs of the audio chipset? this is the machine I have X2 installed on.... http://www.asus.com/Noteb.../G74SX/#specifications

Hi Kalle...

In the Audio pane It shows as WMD/AK (not sure what AK means, never seen it before).... And I know on-board sound chip-sets are not optimal for full out production work

So seeing as I can't seem to change the midi buffer without it dropping out under 250Ms so I pushed up the audio buffer from 29.1Ms (where the wave proflier sets it at I guess) up to 294.4Ms and it replays better but has a 'pushy' sounding playback... and still drops an errant note but not anywhere near what it was dropping yesterday

The machine I want to put it onto is my studio machine that is running CWPA9 perfectly now, I installed X2 onto this machine just to test drive it and was hoping to make the decision to actually purchase it. Was kind of hoping not to have to instll it on my main machine and jack up something until I actually make the plunge

While my old system is working decently I find I cannot not do alot of the things I am slowly finding and fiddling with X2. And my old studio machine is showing its age and alot the hardware and expansions units in have fallen off the radar of support. So it's quickly approaching a point where I will have no choice but (sadly) upgrade and conform to today's standards.

I've always really liked all of CW's products, and so far the work flow in X@ I understand much of it so in that respect it makes sense but also there are many things that I have come across that I have never seen before and am clueless about in X2. It just makes it hard to make a decision like this without a real good test drive.

QAnd some good insight from that do know can help me wade through my tet drive and actually make the decision.

 Thanks scook...

It's been so long I've had to put BR in manually...

Wonder what the issue is here with FF?

On the subject of MIDI buffers.

Set this to 500 (as a minimum). Decreasing it won't reduce latency in the slightest, and increasing it won't affect latency either. Latency is a by-product of the audio drivers and hardware, not MIDI. Put simply, it's the amount of time Sonar looks ahead of itself when reading already existing data from MIDI tracks. A longer time period gives Sonar more time to do the necessary processing to keep up with itself, if you see what I mean.

If that buffer time is too short you get dropouts, missed notes and all sorts of MIDI timing errors.  Increasing it from the default to around 500 (or even more) will go a long way to preventing MIDI timing issues and dropped notes on playback.

Awesome TLW!
 
Pushed up the Midi buffer to 500 as you suggested and then re-ran the wave profiler (this time it set the audio buffer at 39.1Ms) and now it works like a midi charm! Midi data replay now sounds in-step & in-time and so far I haven't heard any missing notes, yet. 
 
Now onto record and mix some midi & audio together with X2, hopefully today, to see what kind of worms that opens, hopefully none.

tlw


I have no idea why Sonar's default MIDI buffer setting is 250ms. It seems to cause loads of people problems - me included which is how I came to find out about it having first spent a couple of days tearing out what hair I have left.

People from Cake have even recommended 500ms on this forum before now.
It usually strikes when things look OK, then an extra synth or an extra step-sequencer pattern is added, then all of a sudden MIDI is all over the place. Entering notes in to the step sequencer while it is running seems to cause most problems in my experience.

It's such a common problem I think I'll put a feature request in suggesting that the default setting should be 500ms when Sonar is installed.

Yeah you think they would. After doing that it made me check on my other machine still running CWPA9 and it is defaulted at 500. Wonder why they would change it anyway. Maybe they just think that machines now are just built bigger and badder and can just handle it? who knows...

tlw


PS- 39.1ms latency? I seriously suggest you give ASIO4ALL a try or, better, get an interface with ASIO drives. I certainly couldn't play a soft synth with that much latency.

Yeah I know but I am just test driving the trial on my laptop so I don't want to make a mess of this machines audio so I'm kinda stuck with it. The machine I intend of installing it on, if I upgrade, is full of ASIO.

tlw


Anyway, glad you're sorted.

Well... yes and no... Since pushing up the buffer and lay down nice clean midi track and then play it back, all seems fine but, as soon as I start splitting it into clips it goes slightly whacky again and I haven't even moved them yet, just spit it. And then if you copy and paste into a second or third track? It gets progressivly worse. It's no longer dropping notes it's as if all notes in each clip shift sligthly on each progressive paste. 
 
At first I thought maybe I was quantizing on an odd signature or snapping to the grid or something but doesn't seem to be the case. If I take a snippet and paste it into a second track and then open the piano roll view and inspect it next to the original they are slightly moved backwards and then progressivley moved backwards by each track paste. Like I said have never had any of these problems on my main machine. It's kind of baffling right now.

Was a bit confused with the snap "BY" & snap "TO"... It was on "snap by"... changed it too "snap to"... probelm still persists though...
 
I can lay down multiple single track midi takes. But as soon as I make a split anyehre, on any single track, at that split point that track drags by about 4Ms as soon as it hits the split. And still if you take it and copy paste it somewhere else add another 4Ms drag and so on...
 
Like I said is drivin me nuts! Even exported the identical tracks into midi files, opened them in CWPA9 and can do what I please for editing, moving, and splitting and all work without a hitch, or behave. After I saved them again from CWPA9 I opened them back in X2 again and as long as I don't touch them they all work fine until I make a split in X2, and again not move anything other than just split it, and it still goes wonky in the same manner.
 
I dunno maybe it's the clock on this onboard sound chip but none the less it's hard to grasp what is causing even the itsy-bitsy editing delay, even when forcing midi clock +/- offsets.
 
This is making it hard wether or not if I should upgrade or not.