midi delay latency

[John Hoare]

Help for a Cakewalk newbie please?

I've plugged a midi keyboard into my (well spec-ed) pc via USB. Using Cakewalk's default  piano voice, there is an long ( 3-400ms?) delay between a keyboard-hit and the sound. 

I've looked under Preferences -> Driver Settings (see attached screengrab); the buffer size is greyed out, and the ASIO panel button does not respond.

How can I get my latency down to an acceptable level?  Garageband on a macbook does not have this problem.

Thanks

 

[user 905133]

It looks to me that you have an issue with audio drivers.  You don't have playback and recording timing masters set.  Are you using an ASIO driver? The delay you report sounds more like you are not using ASIO or even WASAPI.  

What mode do you have selected under Preferences > Audio >  Playback and Recording  (the preference setting immediately under the one you showed us)?

• There should be choices for Driver Mode. On my PC I have:
  • WDM/KS
  • WASAPI Exclusive
  • WASAPI Shared
  • ASIO
  • MME (32-bit)

To me the delay you report sounds like what I get when I choose MME.  If the PC you are using doesn't have an ASIO driver (Don't use ASIO4ALL!), can you choose WASAPI Shared?  If so, does that get rid of the delay?

Edited March 27, 2023 by User 905133
added more details; words changed for the sake of clarity

[John Vere]

 

Edited April 25 by John Vere

[user 905133]

@John Vere Based on the original post are you thinking the delay is midi latency or a delay caused by an improper audio set up (including an inappropriate audio driver mode) ? 

Edited March 27, 2023 by User 905133
changed wording in the interest of clarity

[John Vere]

To make the above video I did a lot of testing and reading on the topic. There can be either Midi or audio or both involved. It depends. Generally midi latency is not enough to be noticeable but people tend to point a finger at it and wrongly call it Midi latency when it might actually be the audio system that is at fault when it becomes noticeable. 99% of the time it's because we have CPU hog plug ins active.    But Midi can have latency too.  So without much info from the OP we can only guess. But one thing for sure they defiantly have not set up the audio system correctly at all. Same old same old. 

Edited March 28, 2023 by John Vere

[user 905133]

11 hours ago, John Vere said:

Generally midi latency is not enough to be noticeable but people tend to point a finger at it and wrongly call it Midi latency when it might actually be the audio system that is at fault when it becomes noticeable. 

Thanks.  This jives with what I was thinking.

[Noel Cruz]

On 3/27/2023 at 10:08 PM, John Vere said:

99% of the time it's because we have CPU hog plug ins active.

This was EXACTLY my issue. Thanks for the insight.