MIDI keyboard latency??

[SPFH73]

Hi,
Having recently purchased a M-audio keystation 49e I have discovered around a half a second delay from pressing the key to hearing a sound out of my computer speakers. I am using cubase ai4 and am finding this really frustrating. I have a USB mixer if this would help? or is there another way to overcome this problem?
Thanks in advance,
Steve

[Dave Boulden]

The latency will most likely be due to the Windows drivers of your PC's built-in soundcard... if your USB mixer has ASIO drivers, then using them instead should enable to lower your latency to something usable for playing VSTi's with your keyboard.

[Peter L Jones]

Just to expand on Dave's post.

The delay you're hearing isn't anything to do with the keyboard. It's there when you trigger any audio within your system. It's just that you only notice how long it takes for the audio to get out when you trigger it and expect an instant response, as if playing an acoustic instrument.

The delay is caused by using large audio buffers. These are used so to increase system performance - that is, to reduce the load on the CPU of performing frequent memory transfers between main memory and device memory. That was a necessary and useful strategy when PCs weren't as powerful as they are now. However, it's getting to the point when even Microsoft has noticed it's annoying...

ASIO drivers bypass the normal Windows drivers and, in general, allow much lower buffer sizes and lower latencies. However, some PCs with on board sound ship with ASIO drivers that aren't much better than the Windows driver or as so bug ridden as to be worthless. In these situations, ASIO4ALL may be the answer.

[Stagesound]

Steve, your USB mixer will not help, because the keyboard doesn't actually produce any audio, (it's a USB MIDI controller) so there's nothing for the mixer to work with.
Do you by any chance have loads of other USB stuff connected to your PC? That might influence the performance of the controller. As steve says, ASIO4ALL is worth a try - I've used it with reasonable success on a really old creaky PC to improve latency.

[Dave Boulden]

Originally Posted by Stagesound

Steve, your USB mixer will not help, because the keyboard doesn't actually produce any audio, (it's a USB MIDI controller) .

Bit of a misconception going on here. I wasn't suggesting the USB mixer would handle anything from the MIDI controller direct. The MIDI controller is, I assume, controlling VST instruments on the PC. I suggested using ASIO drivers for the USB mixer acting as the soundcard for the PC to handle the playback of the audio from the VSTi as ASIO drivers handle low-latency audio much better than WDM or MME drivers as typically used to drive onboard soundcards.

[TrevCircleStudios]

As above the main answer is probably to reduce your buffers (both hardware and playback). This will reduce it significantly. This will leave you a very small amount of latency that you might not even perceive called midi-slop. You can deal with this by holding down a key on your controller while pressing record. In theory you should see that the event happens at 0.00.00. In fact it is likely to appear at about 0.00.12. You then know that you have 20 millisecs of latency in your system. This can be dealt with either by draggin the track back or by setting your software to deal with that by commencing that track at -0.00.20. Hope this makes sense! (it's been a long day)

[Stagesound]

[QUOTE=Dave Boulden;5891]Bit of a misconception going on here...QUOTE]
Sorry Dave - my misunderstanding!
Have you tried ASIO4ALL with your internal card? I've got a pretty crappy on-board card on one of my PC's and it works really well with it. Latency is still noticeable (claims to be around 13mS, but I have my doubts), but not a big problem.

[Dave Boulden]

I did try ASIO4ALL once out of curiosity, but haven't bothererd to try it again since... I always run ASIO thru my Tascam mixer.

[SPFH73]

Thanks for all your help guys.
Downloaded ASIO4ALL and the latency dropped dramatically. Can now use my keyboard without any problems.
Thanks again
Steve