[Solved] MIDI Latency Issues - The Classic Problem Strikes Again

Hello all,
 
I have tried everything 10 times to avoid having to come here and add yet another thread on MIDI latency issues. But I cannot figure out what to do and am at the point of banging my head on the wall. I'll try to post all the facts and make this easy to read.
 
I have Sonar 8 Producer Edition.
I have a Yamaha P105B digital piano.
I am connecting the P105B directly to my computer via a USB-to-host <--> USB 3.0 connection.
I am using ASIO.
SONAR detects my keyboard strokes, just .5-1 seconds delayed.
I have adjusted the buffer size settings in both ASIO4ALL and in SONAR (Options > Audio > General, as documented in the Sonar Knowledge Article).
I have the most recent Yamaha digital piano drivers installed.
I am running Windows 8.1.
 
Nothing works. I've given up and submit myself to power of the forums. Oh wise council, please help me understand why this doesn't work. I just want to record my music with some decent quality in the comfort of my bedroom.
 
 
Edit: added [Solved] to the subject - scook

brundlefly
First, understand that most "MIDI latency" ultimately turns out to be audio latency. Unless you're saying that MIDI notes are being laid down late in the timeline when you record against SONAR's audio metronome...? Assuming that's not the case, the key question is what synth are you echoing the MIDI to, and if it's back to the Yamaha, as opposed to a soft synth, how are you connecting and monitoring the Yamaha's audio output?
 
Also what are you using for an audio interface with what buffer size, and what is SONAR reporting for Input/Output latency? If you're using ASIO4ALL, chances are you're going to need to get a dedicated interface with native ASIO drivers to get the low latency performance needed for live performance of soft synths and input monitoring of your Yamaha.
 

Thanks for replying. I'm using Sonar's Microsoft GS Wavetable S/W synth for audio output.
 
I'm not using an audio interface, the digital piano is connecting directly to my PCs USB 3.0 port. This digital piano has a USB B port as opposed to a 5-pin midi port.
 
I own an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8r interface and have tried recording by using the Line Outs on the digital piano and plugging into a Line In on the interface - this method works but I feel like the sound quality just isn't that great (to be fair, it's OK. but it is definitely not great).  I have to crank the gains up really high and the overall sound quality is bleh to me, not at all comparable to other YouTube pianists who also use digital pianos. I really wanted to try MIDI to see how that can sound.
 
That said, I'm still not really sure which way to go is best (MIDI vs DI using my audio interface). I am lost. I spent like 4 hours messing around with everything yesterday.
 
 

What audio EFX have you running in the Sonar Project?

brundlefly
GS Wavetable is your soundcard's onboard synth which is presented as a MIDI port to SONAR. GS Wavetable always has horrendous response time, exacerbated by poor audio output latency, not to mention horrible sound quality. i recommend you uncheck it in MIDI devices, and don't use it.
 
Try inserting a soft synth with audio track, and redirecting the output of the MIDI track tot hat soft synth (or inseret it with the Simple Instrument option which combines MIDI and Audio functionality in one track). The overall response should be much faster, although audio output latency may still be noticeable.

Hmm, noted. The Sonar knowledge article said to use >_<. I will give what you said a try when I get home.

Doktor Avalanche
Completely remove ASIO4ALL and reboot.
Download the latest firmware and driver and use the ASIO driver for that.

Try connecting your piano to a USB2 port.

Also note your audio interface... USB 3 is at least not supported on Win7.

http://avid.force.com/pkb...Track-Ultra-8R-Drivers

Also update your keyboard firmware and drivers.

Run windows update.

Then get tweaking if necessary.

The main thing is to avoid ASIO4ALL.

So this comes back one of my big questions initially... should I be going for a MIDI connection directly from my digital piano to my computer? Or should I be going through the audio interface?
 
If your answer is "through the audio interface", then I have another question. Should I be connecting my piano from the Line-Out on the piano to the Line-In on the audio interface (which I mentioned above, I am able to do but have not been satisfied with the sound quality).
 
Or should I try to be doing a MIDI connection through the audio interface? The problem I'm having here is that my digital piano only has a USB to host. Actually, I don't even know if that's a problem. It's just that nearly every tutorial I find online shows the keyboard using a MIDI port, not a USB to host.
 
To summarize, the worst part for me now is that I simply do not know how I should be connecting to my computer for the best results. DI or MIDI?? I see 3 options:
 
1) Digital piano (usb B) to computer (usb a) - this is a MIDI connection

 
results - latency issues 
 
2) Digital piano (Line Out) to Audio Interface (Line In) to Computer (USB) - this is a DI connection, not MIDI
 
results - this works, but the sound quality is only ok. Same thing as if I plugged a guitar directly into the audio interface and recorded. The quality would be thin and mediocre.
 
3)Digital piano (usb b or Line Out??) to Audio interface (...Midi?) to computer (USB) - this would be a MIDI connection
 
results - none, i don't know how to get this to work because my keyboard uses usb b instead of a midi port.
 
 

This video might help you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7QY3uIdzUQ
 

Doktor Avalanche
If you want to record the audio directly from the keyboard, use the audio interface (via jack leads or whatever). That's the only way to do it if you want your exact keyboard sounds.
 

 
I would love exact keyboard sounds, but why does it sound so... mediocre when done this way? That's basically why I'm eager to try out MIDI.
 
 
As mentioned, I have a Yamaha P105b, a keyboard that sounds great through headphones, amps. The keyboard seems to be revered in the piano community as a great "mid-grade" digital piano, even considered high end quality by some. So why does the DI option through my interface sound so disappointing? Why is the tone so thin and why do I have to crank the gain up so high on the audio interface that it degrades the quality of the recording?
 
This just seems like something that shouldn't be this complicated in the year 2015 :)

user508
As mentioned, I have a Yamaha P105b, a keyboard that sounds great through headphones, amps. The keyboard seems to be revered in the piano community as a great "mid-grade" digital piano, even considered high end quality by some. So why does the DI option through my interface sound so disappointing? Why is the tone so thin and why do I have to crank the gain up so high on the audio interface that it degrades the quality of the recording?
 
This just seems like something that shouldn't be this complicated in the year 2015 :)

Once again please see post #6. Also if there is a pad button facility on your audio interface try it on or off.
If you still don't get good results try playing through a soft synth (I posted a vid earlier). Results are often better much that way anyway.

II've just had a look at the downloadable manual for the Yamaha P-105, amd I suspect you may be a little confused. Please forgive me if I state the obvious, but it's usually better to say more than mecessary than less.

1. The USB socket is what Yamaha call a "to host" socket. It only handles two things. One is MIDI data and the other is you van transfer "songs" from the Yamaha's internal memory to a computer for storage.

2. MIDI is not audio and audio is not MIDI. MIDI is instructions that tell a device, in this case a P-105, what to do. Which notes to play and when, how loudly to play them and so on. The P-105 then plays whatever those instructions tell it to and audio comes out. It's a bit like the old player-pianos that had a long paper roll with holes in it which told them what to play. MIDI is the holed in the paper, not sound.

3. To get MIDI in and out of the keyboard connect it to a USB socket on the PC. You will also need to load the Yamaha drivers to do this. They appear to be available here - http://usa.yamaha.com/pro...pianos/p_series/p-105/

4. Once the Yamaha drivers are installed and the keyboard connected it should show up as a MIDI port in Sonar's preferences. Enable both thenin and out ports. While you are there disable the Microsoft synth's ports in Sonar. That MS synth is only there as a last resort for old games and multimedia stuff which used MIDI files rather than background audio so needed a General MIDI (GM) compliant synth to be available. The MS one is rubbish, and if you need the GM sounds for any reason Sinar has TTS-1 which is much, much better.

5. Uninstall ASIO4ALL. It is a hack written in the hope it might fool Windows into thinking the on-board PC sound has ASIO drivers. ASIO drivers give much, much less latency than the standard Windows ones but most PC built-in soundchips don't have them, so if you are stuck with on-board sound ASIO4ALL can be worth trying. It is very difficult to optimally configure, often doesn't work very well and is worse than any ASIO driver provided by an an ASIO interface manufacturer.

Like the MS synth it's a final fall-back when nothing else is available. Unfortunately you will find some posts on some general audio-related forums claiming ASIO4ALL is the greatest and best in all circumstances. That's like saying if your car brakes fail, you can stop the car by driving into a tree - so even when the brakes are working fine when you want to stop don't press the brake pedal, just run into that tree instead.

So. Download the latest drivers for your interface and install them. If you select ASIO as the driver mode in Sonar's preferences you should then find the ins and outs on the interface are available.

6. Connect the keyboard audio outputs to a pair of line inputs on the interface. Connect speakers to the interface outputs.

7. Turn up the keyboard volume until your loudest playing is getting near, but not in, the red on the interface.

8. Set up a fresh blank project in Sonar. Create one audio track and one MIDI track. Set the input of the audio track to be whatever inputs on the interface the piano is connected to. Arm the track for recording and, with any luck, when you play you should see the track meter respond. The track output should point at the master bus which in turn outputs to the hardware. Sonar usually gets that right by default.

You should now be able to record and play back audio.

9. MIDI. Here's where things get a bit more complicated.

The input of the MIDI track should be set to the port that Sonar receives MIDI from the keyboard on. If you arm that track for record and play you should see the track meter respond. You can now record your performance as MIDI data.

To play the MIDI data back from the keyboard you need to point the MIDI track output at the keyboard's other MIDI port, to start with set the channel as "omni". Then, when you play the MIDI track, the keyboard should play the notes. If you want to overdub MIDI into that track be aware you may hear the notes twice or get a kind of flanging. This is because the keyboard plays the note when you press a key then plays it again a few milliseconds later when Sonar echos the MIDI back to it. To stop this either disable the MIDI track's echo function or, better, set the keyboard to what is called "local off". "Local off" means the keyboard doesn't play when you press the key but only responds to the MIDI coming back into it from Sonar.

Local off is very useful if you want to use the piano to play another synth, either a software one or hardware. To use a software synth load one in Sonar then set up a MIDI track as above with the input the piano and the output the software synth.

With any luck that will help you get started. There are other things to deal with, like you'll probably still have some latency problems to start with so long as you use a decent audio interface and ASIO drivers things can usually be tweaked until they work. There's also things like MIDI channels, but, again, let's go one step at a time.

If you need an introduction to MIDI Sound on Sound have a series of very good articles which start here - https://www.soundonsound....aug95/midibasics1.html

The articles are old, but as useful today as they were when written. MIDI is one of those things that were got so right in the first place that there haven't been many changes and the things that have changed have been to expand it a bit not change the first principles.

It's also worth reading the MIDI related parts of the keyboard manual and downloading it's MIDI spec document from Yamaha (same place as the drivers), as every hardware instrument handles MIDI a bit differently and has peculiarities of its own.

Finally, if you don't understand or something doesn't work, never be afraid to ask. We all had to start somewhere, none of us were born knowing this stuff and there's a wealth of good advice and information to be had from this forum.

Great..
 
I still recommend  the rest of post #6 for maintenance and please... Have a go at soft synths... I think you may be missing out!... Cheers.