midi delay?!??!

[darknailblue]

Hi. I just bought a M-Audio Keystation 49e, and I'm using Cakewalk Homestudio 2004 XL. My computer is a custom built one running an adm athlon 2000+ around 1.6ghz and running 786mbs or RAM. Thing is, when I play the keyboard using softsynth, It lags like hell, and I can't play in time at all. Quantize is becoming a function of much use, and also a lot of aggravation. I'm using the USB connection for this. Would hooking it up to the midi in port be faster? The reason I haven't tried this is becuase I don't have an adaptor and I don't want to buy one if it won't make a difference. Let me know...

~darknailblue

 

[ssscientist]

What you've got hold of there is called latency, and it may have something to do with not having the current USB drivers for that keyboard. The M-Audio site is very good about having the current drivers for all of their products easily accessible -- see if a quick trip there doesn't solve the problem...

 

[AlChuck]

The problem is not the USB driver involved with moving the MIDI data -- it's the audio drivers of your soundcard. After the MIDI message is received and routed to a softsynth, the synth has to respond and pipe the result down the audio stream. This is where the significant delay lies.

What's your sound card? If it has either WDM or ASIO drivers, you should be able to knock this latency back enough that it's negligible (on the order of 10 ms). While Cakewalk products usually do a good job of profiling the sound hardware automatically, you might have to play with the buffer settings to get the best performance.