Sound playback and MIDI notes don't match... latency??? Or what?

Sorry, accidently post.

John


I have seen this before in the forum some time ago but can't recall what caused it. Do you have any plugins in the audio track?

Yes each of my tracks (including this one) have plug in effects. Typically, I'll have the percussion strip and reverb.

John


That could be your problem. Do the same test without the plugins and see if it is delayed.

Yes it is delayed even without plugins. It is delayed from the very beginnig, there has never been a time when I did not experience the delay (i.e. never a time when everything was aligned).


But even if it WAS because of the plugins, that doesn't mean I should have to stop using plugins altogether right? That would be bad

John


Do you have ADC off? Automatic Delay Compensation.

From the manual

Look-ahead processing at high latencies
Some plug-ins, such as the Sonitus:fx Multiband and other dynamics processors, use a look-ahead
buffer mechanism, which results in a short delay being introduced to the output signal when the
plug-in is used in real-time. SONAR’s automatic delay compensation (ADC) takes care of any
delays, but you may experience some anomalies when using such a plug-in to process the output of
a DXi-especially if SONAR is configured to use a high mixing latency. The symptoms include audio
that appears to drop out, and/or missed notes (from the MIDI track that is assigned to the DXi).
Again, this is more prone to occur with higher latency settings.
This may happen if SONAR doesn't pump ahead enough MIDI data to compensate for ADC. To fix
this problem, go to Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Playback and Recording and increase the
Prepare Using [n] Millisecond Buffers value.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate your effort. Unfortunately like I said, the delay occurs even when I don't use plugin effects. For example, if I have a melodic line from Z3TA and a drum line from Session Drummer 3, even though the MIDI notes are aligned, the playback from the the two are off.


I did check to make sure that the delay compensation is enabled.

brundlefly
One thing that's odd is it looks like the note offs and the end of the transients are aligned...? 

I could be wrong (ege if it's one shot samples which only coincidentally look like the end is aligned with the note off), but I'd be thinking the release phase in the freezed version should start with the note off. That would mean the release phase actually is setting in early in the freezed verison.

I'd be thinking the release phase in the freezed version should start with the note off. That would mean the release phase actually is setting in early in the freezed verison.

True. I was assuming a normal patch with zero release time. I suppose a concidental one-shot length is possible. When I first saw this Bitbridge bug, the attacks of the audio transients were coincidentally aligning perfectly with the ends of the MIDI notes, which really threw me for a loop at first. 

Any other ideas?? Anybody? I can't imagine having to live with out-of-sync tracks forever... it would be a pain to have to manually align ever single track of every single project I ever make with Sonar X1...

Perhaps the freeze process plays the MIDI late... so the audio is rendered in the freeze when it happens

I don't know the underpinnings of the soft synth rendering process well enough to be sure, but in my experience, nothing can make audio render out of sync with MIDI except a bug like the Bitbridge thing, or something about the way the soft synth itself is generating audio (e.g. long attack or pre-delay in the patch/sample or deliberate sample randomization a la RealGuitars.).


AFAIK, PDC, Timing Offset, Latency Compensation and other factors that affect MIDI and audio playback and recording sync affect only those real-time processes. Rendering with Fast Bounce enabled is not subject to any of that.


Th only real-time parameter I know of that that can affect rendering is the buffer size if BounceBuffSizeMsec is set to 0 in AUD.INI so that rendering uses the real-time value by default. And the Bitbridge bug is the only place I've ever seen a render sync issue due to buffer size. Incidentally, for anyone who wants to see this bug in action, the 32-bit DropZone does it. The higher you set your buffer, the later the audio will render.