record is broken when using MIDI metronome

[David Thiel]

When I set up the metronome to use MIDI for the metronome sound, recording does not occur after the specified count in.

after four beats this stays like this, nothing is recorded.  Sometimes it says Count-in 5 or 6 but is does note change.

If I switch back to the audio metronome it behaves like normal, moving the cursor as note are recorded.

To have the lowest latency I am moving to tracking with a synth and MIDI metronome.  So far I can not do this.

I'm using the default 'Recording' options.  I've tried all of them with the same result.

Just me?

 

David Thiel

 

[tecknot]

Hi David,

It appears from your screen shot that the Audio Engine is off.  Press the icon circled in red to turn it on (see below).

 

Kind regards,

tecknot

[User 905133]

Withdrawn.  The message I used to get in SONAR was the one for MIDI Sync.  

Edited March 1, 2022 by User 905133

[John Vere]

The Midi metronome uses the MS Wavetable midi  which sucks.  There's nothing wrong with the Audio metronome so use it. 

17-Exporting the Metronome  https://youtu.be/f44mdLdmlBE

 

[David Baay]

4 hours ago, David Thiel said:

I am moving to tracking with a synth and MIDI metronome. 

If your project has no audio tracks and no soft synths, there is nothing to enable the audio engine which is needed to run the transport if the Clock source in Preferences is Audio. You can try changing it to Internal (i.e. the Windows system clock), but my experience loading old MIDI-only projects is that CbB no longer likes to run as pure MIDI sequencer.

You don't have to use the MIDI metronome just because you want to direct-monitor your outboard synths. But if you don't enable the audio metronome, you'll need to  add a dummy soft synth or audio track with Input Echo enabled to give the audio engine something to process.

Or you could just  dig out your old 80286 with the MPU-401 MIDI interface and fire up Cakewalk for DOS. ;^)

 

[User 905133]

11 hours ago, John Vere said:

The Midi metronome uses the MS Wavetable midi  . . . .

WOW!  I never knew this.  I always thought it used MIDI gear.  Gonna boot Cakewalk and some gear to test.  I hope "they" didn't remove that.

UPDATE:  PHEW!!!!! You had me worried there, John .  Please don't do that.   We can still use external gear for the MIDI Metronome.

Quote

MIDI Metronome

• Use MIDI Note.  Choosing this option causes the metronome to sound by playing a MIDI note.
• First Beat.         Choose a Key (a note) and a Velocity for the first metronome attack in the measure.
• Other Beats.   Choose a Key (a note) and a Velocity for the other metronome attacks in the measure.
• Port.                     Choose the port that the MIDI note plays through.
• Channel.           Choose the MIDI channel your metronome plays on.
• Duration.         Choose how many Ticks you want the metronome sound to last.

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by User 905133
(2) to report that the MIDI metronome does not have to use the MS Wavetable psuedo synth; (1) to get risk of "sucks"

[John Vere]

Ya of course but it’s pretty rare anybody else is using hardware these days and it can get complicated to set up. But hardware is a great way to feed a drummer a click track with out it being part of the DAW audio output for live performances. 

I had never used the midi metronome mostly because I rarely used the metronome as I usually start with a simple drum track.
But to make the tutorial I dug in a little deeper and that’s when I figured out you need the Wavetable synth checked in midi outputs for it to work.Something I uncheck 24 years ago!   But then you won’t hear the wavetable synth with out somehow sending its output to your monitors so it’s a bit too convoluted for newbies 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by John Vere

[57Gregy]

I could never hear the metronome, so I created a simple drum track that is now part of my preferred template.

[David Thiel]

very interesting responses.

In the spirit of forum sharing:

I make a living with Cakewalk.  Even though in the distant past when I was a classical organ major in college and dealt with distant banks of organ pipes (50 yards) I'm not tolerant of latency when tracking.  My performances are rarely lined up with the grid.  To deal with this I enter fragments and do a lot of editing.

I  acquired a little dedicated blue plastic GM MIDI synth hanging off of a MOTU micro lite which is playing a wood block at D#6 on Output 2, channel 10, duration 6 clicks.

My notion was that I would only have the slightly indeterminate USB MIDI jitter between the metronome click and my ear instead of the latency of the 256 buffer of the Babyface Pro audio metronome.

When I track I'm using  Yamaha EX5 piano or other appropriate sound to hear what I am playing to the MidiPlus click.  After I get the notes in I will orchestrate them with VST audio.

I switched to another project and found that I could record with the MIDI metronome.  Not quite sure why yet but the above gives me some things to look into.

To my surprise I was consistently playing before the grid.   An experiment: I entered in the d#6 on a MIDI track, mimicking the metronome and hit record; only to find that they were not together!  Hmmmmm.  I turned off PDC and it was much worse....

This is where I am at the start of the 'better tracking' day.

[David Thiel]

broken record came back so this thread continues.  I took a step back.  Since record works with the audio metronome I tried a simple experiment.  I recorded the result with my cell phone (to keep the computer out of it).   As you can see above, the tink played with MIDI hardware from the grid soundss and 95 msec later the audio metronome plays.  With a  buffer output latency of 6.2 msec I can't account for the other 89 msec.

so I looked at these settings:

at 48K, 575 samples is 0.011 of a second (as a music major I'm in the deep weeds now) so it seems unlikely that the Record Latency Adjustment is the problem.

So I have two issues in this thread, broken record when using the MIDI metronome and the latency issue that I'm trying to address by using MIDI only for tracking.

I'm going to continue poking at this till I wrestle it to the ground.

[David Thiel]

broken record came back so this thread continues.  I took a step back.  Since record works with the audio metronome I tried a simple experiment.  I recorded the result with my cell phone (to keep the computer out of it).   As you can see above, the tink played with MIDI hardware from the grid soundss and 95 msec later the audio metronome plays.  With a  buffer output latency of 6.2 msec I can't account for the other 89 msec.

so I looked at these settings:

at 48K, 575 samples is 0.011 of a second (as a music major I'm in the deep weeds now) so it seems unlikely that the Record Latency Adjustment is the problem.

So I have two issues in this thread, broken record when using the MIDI metronome and the latency issue that I'm trying to address by using MIDI only for tracking.

I'm going to continue poking at this till I wrestle it to the ground.

[David Thiel]

neither unchecking "Use ASIO Reported Latency" nor clicking PDC changes the 96 msec delay of the acoustic metronome.

[David Thiel]

experiment 2:  Play the same metronome clip from a VST instead of the MIDI hardware.

Result:  perfect sync, audibly and visually playing at the same time.

confusing.... why is sound triggered from the grid through MIDI hardware not synchronized?

[David Baay]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:37 AM, David Thiel said:

I turned off PDC and it was much worse....

The PDC button should have no no effect one way or the other unless there's a plugin in the project that induces PDC. So the first thing to do is to identify and remove that plugin.

On 3/1/2022 at 12:44 PM, David Thiel said:

As you can see above, the tink played with MIDI hardware from the grid soundss and 95 msec later the audio metronome plays.  With a  buffer output latency of 6.2 msec I can't account for the other 89 msec.

This much latency also suggests a PDC issue. 

On 3/1/2022 at 12:55 PM, David Thiel said:

xperiment 2:  Play the same metronome clip from a VST instead of the MIDI hardware.

Result:  perfect sync, audibly and visually playing at the same time.

Soft synths driven by existing MIDI (i.e. not by live input from a hardware MIDI port) are buffered up in advance and behave just like recorded audio.

On 3/1/2022 at 12:55 PM, David Thiel said:

why is sound triggered from the grid through MIDI hardware not synchronized?

If not PDC, it's a hardware/firmware/driver issue. There is no mis-configuration I know of that that can produce that much latency