AmpleSound virtual guitar users: Midi delay compensation??

[Billy86]

I'm working with AS Taylor virtual guitar and not having much luck getting it to synch with project bpm. In this video, the tutorial mentions the need to "MIDI delay compensate" about negative 50ms to get it to play on the beat, in time.  It's at about the 7:30 mark of the video.  I'm familiar with CW Preferences/MIDI/Playback and Recording, where you can set "Playback-Prepare Using" where you set millisecond buffers. But it's not possible to set a negative buffer. Should I be looking somewhere else to make this adjustment?? I've looked through all the Preferences settings and don't see a "MIDI Delay Compensation" setting. My strumming pattern is significantly out of time. Thank you.

 

 

[Promidi]

If you press i to open the inspector for your MIDI track that is routed to AS Taylor, there is a setting right at the bottom where you can add this negative time value.  Look for a field named “Time +” and enter a negative value.

Granted it’s in ticks, rather than milliseconds, so you will have to to experiment to get this value right.  You would want to set your project’s tempo before settling on a value for this “Time +”.  This is because the actual delay in milliseconds that a given value gives you will change if you change the project’s tempo.

There have been some feature requests to be able to enter an absolute time in milliseconds in the “Time +” field rather than ticks.  On a default install of Cakewalk by Bandlab, there are 960 ticks per quarter note.

Note: I also change this “Time +” value for MIDI tracks routed to presets where the transient of note sound actually occurs after the note’s trigger time.

[John Vere]

Question. Does the strummer generate midi notes? If it does wouldn't it work to just drag those back a bit to sync it up?  I might need to figure this out someday as my hands are slowly becoming arthritic. Electric guitar is OK but I'm slowly loosing my grip on the wider neck of my acoustic. 

[abacab]

I don't have the Ample guitar, but I have a couple of Ample basses. They have a "riffer" module with factory riffs, and that can play tabs or import MIDI, and export tabs and riffs MIDI via drag and drop to a DAW track.

I have never observed the Ample basses being off-beat, but this post inspired me to investigate... I listened to a few Ample riffs with my CbB metronome switched on for playback and things seemed to be in sync.

In the video example provided in the OP, the delay compensation is related to the ADSR envelope of the sample being played by the Ample instrument. I looked through my Ample bass presets and noticed that they had variable sample delays (case by case) that seemed to average about 35 ms. Some presets had none, so if you are going to delay the DAW track by a fixed amount, you may need to check if any delay is already present in the Ample preset.

The MIDI dragged into the DAW track would be independent of any envelope settings in the instrument itself, as it would just be a timing issue if the instrument was playing the "attack" for the sample early or late.

Edited March 1, 2023 by abacab

[Billy86]

On 3/1/2023 at 2:00 AM, Promidi said:

If you press i to open the inspector for your MIDI track that is routed to AS Taylor, there is a setting right at the bottom where you can add this negative time value.  Look for a field named “Time +” and enter a negative value.

Granted it’s in ticks, rather than milliseconds, so you will have to to experiment to get this value right.  You would want to set your project’s tempo before settling on a value for this “Time +”.  This is because the actual delay in milliseconds that a given value gives you will change if you change the project’s tempo.

There have been some feature requests to be able to enter an absolute time in milliseconds in the “Time +” field rather than ticks.  On a default install of Cakewalk by Bandlab, there are 960 ticks per quarter note.

Note: I also change this “Time +” value for MIDI tracks routed to presets where the transient of note sound actually occurs after the note’s trigger time.

Thanks.  This got me really close... had to go with -60, which seened to work best. I've never changed the default from 960 ticks per quarter note. 

[Billy86]

22 hours ago, John Vere said:

Question. Does the strummer generate midi notes? If it does wouldn't it work to just drag those back a bit to sync it up?  I might need to figure this out someday as my hands are slowly becoming arthritic. Electric guitar is OK but I'm slowly loosing my grip on the wider neck of my acoustic. 

Yes, the app generates MIDI notes, which you can drag into PRV for tweaking. I've done  bit of that with what I'm doing. Can't really tweak (as far as I can tell; I'm new to Ample's guitars) in the program's sequencer. 

[Billy86]

21 hours ago, abacab said:

They have a "riffer" module with factory riffs, and that can play tabs or import MIDI, and export tabs and riffs MIDI via drag and drop to a DAW track.

This is the same in the guitar models.

 

21 hours ago, abacab said:

I have never observed the Ample basses being off-beat, but this post inspired me to investigate... I listened to a few Ample riffs with my CbB metronome switched on for playback and things seemed to be in sync.

In the video example provided in the OP, the delay compensation is related to the ADSR envelope of the sample being played by the Ample instrument. I looked through my Ample bass presets and noticed that they had variable sample delays (case by case) that seemed to average about 35 ms. Some presets had none, so if you are going to delay the DAW track by a fixed amount, you may need to check if any delay is already present in the Ample preset.

The MIDI dragged into the DAW track would be independent of any envelope settings in the instrument itself, as it would just be a timing issue if the instrument was playing the "attack" for the sample early or late.

Thanks for the reply. Interesting, yes. Curious that they have variable ms delays on the attacks; doesn't make sense to me. I changed mine in this instrument to zero delay.  With the call for -50 ms MIDI delay, I wonder if it's not Ample's version of the Native Instrument VSTi's pointing out that note events should be just slightly before the beats, which I always do by hand. 

[John Vere]

It's simple to test the latency of a VST instrument. 

Use a Midi track and a Simple instrument track , Put some midi data in the Midi track and make sure it's quantized to the grid.  Then freeze the synth.  First you can zoom in and check using the M-B-T grid. Set timeline to Milliseconds and using  Aim  assist to read the difference in Milliseconds. Or use Samples which is a finer scale. The important thing to watch is where the actual transient is because that's what we hear. But we are talking music here and not robots. Real music was never this tight. 4ms is not really something you can put your finger on, but 50 ms is. 

It's been a common habit of long time midi users to nudge certain tracks back until they "sound right" slow attach of strings comes to mind. It would seems the case here as well. Use your ears. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by John Vere

[Promidi]

Yes, I just use the “use my ears” method.....

[Billy86]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

It's simple to test the latency of a VST instrument. 

Use a Midi track and a Simple instrument track , Put some midi data in the Midi track and make sure it's quantized to the grid.  Then freeze the synth.  First you can zoom in and check using the M-B-T grid. Set timeline to Milliseconds and using  Aim  assist to read the difference in Milliseconds. Or use Samples which is a finer scale. The important thing to watch is where the actual transient is because that's what we hear. But we are talking music here and not robots. Real music was never this tight. 4ms is not really something you can put your finger on, but 50 ms is. 

It's been a common habit of long time midi users to nudge certain tracks back until they "sound right" slow attach of strings comes to mind. It would seems the case here as well. Use your ears. 

Just watched your video on this. And thank you for all the work you put into those. I’ve done a video or two, and I know how time consuming they can be to make. 

[John Vere]

2 hours ago, Billy86 said:

Just watched your video on this. And thank you for all the work you put into those. I’ve done a video or two, and I know how time consuming they can be to make. 

Yes the one on 50 free compressors took almost 2 months overall. But I ended up with too much info so made it into a 4 part series. Then this testing Midi had me doing more testing and trying to figure stuff out than I thought too. Best thing about the process is I really learn about about Cakewalk. Like I just discovered Aim Assist doing these. How come I didn't find that 1 year ago when I needed it! You never stop learning.