mAudio 49e + CW HS 2K4 = difficult timing?

[Chill]

I picked up an mAudio 49e MIDI controller so that I could do recordings of the MIDI drums in Cakewalk Homestudio 2004 w/o using the piano roll. The 49e is going in through a USB port and I'm using the Edirol VSC for the MIDI output. The 49e works, but the timing of it is wierd. Sometimes the notes will be delayed, other times they will be quiet. I think it has to do with the velocity function of the MIDI controller...seems like there is a minimum speed the notes can be entered with a velocity of 100, or a maximum velocity for certain speeds.

Is there a way to turn off the velocity portion of the control so that I can just get the notes on the grid and change the velocity later if needed? Are all MIDI controllers like this, or are there some that have better timing/ less latency?

 

[guttadaj]

If you want all the notes to be at the same velocity, you should be able to apply the Velocity MIDI effect to the track, which allows you to set all the notes to a specific velocity (or even spread them over a range).

There may be a way to turn off velocity sensitivity on your MIDI controller. Or I'm not sure, but you might be able to filter out the receiving of velocity information from within HS. As far as latency, MIDI doesn't really have any (unless you results of longer cables) so that's not your controller's fault. It's your computer and soundcard together that are trying to produce audio from the MIDI instructions - that process might be a little slow and can be causing the latency problem. Souping up the computer in some ways (more memory, faster processor) might help as might a new soundcard. If those things aren't really options, then there are other ways to monitor to avoid latency.

HTH
-Jeff

 

[Chill]

Thanks for the info. The important part for me is getting the notes into the computer with the right timing so I don't have to mess with sticking the notes on the grid; once they're there it is easy enough to edit the velocities of the individual notes.

I haven't been able to figure out how to turn off the velocity function of the controller or of HS. Is there a way to get HS to ignore the velocity info?

Would the latency be reduced by running the MIDI controller out of the MIDI jack and into the computer's joystick jack? And what soundcards work well with MIDI controllers?

 

[Chill]

And some followup:

Options | Audio | General has the MIDI buffer size. Turning it down to 10ms greatly improved the response time and I've had no dropouts or jitters. With quick hits like 16th notes there is still some noticeable latency; is there a way to get rid of that?

 

[AlChuck]

It's not MIDI latency that's the problem. You need ASIO or WDM drivers for the audio output of a softsynth to be able to respond with low latency to incoming MIDI messages