Midi problem

B

Brian Grey

New member
Hey anyone out there who knows midi...

I'm JUST learning right now how to record/play midi on my computer. I'm using a Layla 20, and a Roland JV-90 keyboard as my hardware. For my software I'm using SONAR XL.

My problem is that every time I play a note on my keyboard there is a second delay before I hear the sound on my computer. I'm thinking the delay comes from having to listen to the sound through an extra audio track with a DXI.

Does anyone know why this is happening and what I can do about it? I'm new at the midi stuff... I just figure out how to simply listen to MIDI through the Layla last week, after not knowing for about 4 years... :P

Later,
-Brian
 
You got it, that's exactly right. DXi softsynths are not responsive enough to be played in real-time unless you have WDM drivers for your sound card and they give you low enough latency. What kind of soundcard are you using, and what operating system are you using?
 
I'm using the Layla, which has its own sound card it plugs in to.

My operating system is Windows 98 SE.

What do you suggest I do to get this delay gone?
 
Apparently WDM drivers are very difficult to get running under Windows 98SE, even though it's supposed to support them. Most card manufacturers don't even suggest that it's possible, preferring to keep their customers out of the mire by acting as if their drivers are for XP and 2000 only...(I have not yet been brave enough to try it).

I don't know what driver development is like for the older Layla, if they even offer WDM drivers for them... check Echo's website. And prepare to upgrade to XP or 2000 if they do have working WDM drivers.

That's all you can do if you stick with SONAR.

If you had Cubase or Logic, you could use ASIO drivers with Windows 98 and get low latency with VST softsynths, but not DXi. But I'm not sure if ASIO drivers are available for the Echo cards.
 
I just upgraded to 98SE so I could run Sound Forge 5, so upgrading again would kind of suck. I don't even think my computer is fast enough to run XP or 2000.

If I got the new Layla, which I'm thinking about doing anyway, would this all work?

Does anyone know how to get this working without major upgrades? Also, does anyone know if the new Layla will work in a regular computer? If I buy a Dell computer will the new Layla work? For the Layla 20 I had to buy a specially built computer with open archetecture. Can I use a regular one?

I am going to stick with SONAR, I love it, it loves me, it rocks. I've never used Midi before I just started dinking around with it lately, so it's not the end of the world if I can't use it right now, but if I stay with SONAR what is the best hardware to get the job done?
 
Well, I'm sure the Layla 24 has WDM drivers by now even if the Layla 20 doesn't (and it might, I don't know)... but there's still the difficulty of actually getting them to work under Windows 98SE.

Re your question about the Dell, ask Echo.

I love SONAR too. It's not so much a matter of hardware as much as OS and drivers. The Layla rocks, if you can get a WDM driver and you upgrade to XP.
 
I actually got the latency problem figured out. I have all the correct drivers you were talking about. The problem was: Under the Options>Audio menu, under the Audio tab, at the bottom there's a slider bar for the delay of MIDI. I don't know why the hell anyone would want to have a 350 milisecond delay on their midi sound, but that's where the slider bar was when I found it. I slid it to the left so the delay was under 10 miliseconds and the delay was gone. If I slid it too far the sound dropped out. Anyone know why that might happen?
 
>I don't even think my computer is fast enough to run XP or 2000.

I've seen Win 2K run fine on a P-166 with 64 MB.
Don't know about XP.
 
>Is that Win 2K Pro you're talking about? I don't want no ME :P

Yeah, but that still doesn't mean I'd recommend a machine that slow for recording;
only saying that the O/S is comfortable enough to run an MS Office Suite
on that machine.
 
Well my computer is:

PII 450
384 MB RAM
Win 98SE
Open archecture mother board

I'm pretty sure WIN 2K will "run", but I'm fine with the speed of my computer for now.
 
hey, man...one thing I haven't seen mentioned here is input monitoring. If you're running your gear into an external mixer, make sure you disable input monitoring in Sonar. This will cause lots and lots of latency on a slower machine.
 
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