Lowest latency achieved via Overbridge on MacOS Monterey?

Hello all,

I’ve used OB on my Windows desktop and it’s awesome, nearly sample-accurate in terms of latency.

I’ve just purchased a new MacBook M1 Pro and just started testing out OB and Ableton on this device. Unfortunately I’m having issues getting my recordings via OB in Ableton to land on the grid. I would say I am pretty well familiar with all of the ways Ableton handles latency (Driver Error Compensation, setting Montor to “In/Auto” vs “Off”, Delay Compensation, Reduced Latency When Monitoring, etc), but I am stumped here.

Here are my current settings Overbridge Control Panel:

On the Ableton side of things, I have Delay Compensation enabled. I have monitor set to “Off” (though in my tests on Mac and Windows this setting does not seem to have an effect of how “on-grid” audio recorded from Overbridge is). I have no plugins in this project aside from the Analog Rytm plugin. No track delay is set, and I have made sure to disable all of the In/Out MIDI ports for the Analog Rytm as the Overbridge manual has described.

I have Sync in the AR Overbridge plugin set to “Clock + Transport”. I have an extremely simple 4/4 kick drum pattern programmed in on the AR. Here is a screenshot from one of the many recordings I have made via OB of the master output of the AR. The audio is coming in about 7ms too late.

Has anyone been able to get better latency than this on MacOS Monterey? I am on version 12.0.1 and will update and test again shortly. Specifically I am using a MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 10 cores, 16 GPU cores, and 16 GB of memory.

Updated to Monterey 12.1, still seeing latencies of about 2ms. The change in latency might have to do with the fact that I lowered my Audio Buffer size in Ableton to 256 samples (the Analog Rytm OB plugin told me to do this).

Hoping to see if anyone here on MacOS has been able to achieve (nearly) sample accurate recordings with Overbridge!

If anyone else running Monterey 12.1 could run a similar test, I would be extremely appreciative!

You should set your Buffer in Ableton same as in the OB-Control Panel…so if you set 64 there…so should you in Ableton aswell. I prefer running Ableton always with 64 samples.

Just tried another basic test with both Overbridge and Ableton buffer set to 64 samples, simple saw wave playing on my Analog Four MkII with Atk set to 0. The audio is 10ms late :frowning:

bumping thread in case anyone else is willing to post their own test results!

can you try recording with monitoring set to off?

I have tried that, I’m aware of how it affects recording external audio in Ableton but it doesn’t seem to have an effect when recording audio coming from Overbridge (at least according to my tests). Either way I am fairly confident that this isn’t the issue I’m seeing here as I’ve ran all these tests with “Monitor” set to “Off”.

I appreciate the input though!

If you’re on Monterey 12.1 and have time to run a test similar to what I’ve done, I would be very curious to see your results!

Per the suggestion of Elektron support, I tried these tests again with the Ableton 11.1 public beta, which natively supports Apple Silicon. I re-ran my tests after rebooting. Initially, things seemed to be working correctly. However, as I continued to run more tests, latency issues reappeared, even after rebooting and trying with different audio buffer sizes in both Ableton and Overbridge Control Panel.

I am hoping that Elektron support will help me resolve this issue, and I will post any solutions or findings I come across in this thread.

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Got the exact same issue, no matter what I do, it’s always 7-10ms out. Obviously speaking of Mac OS 12.x. No matter you have 64, 256, monitor it or not, it’s always doing the same. I use bitwig and it’s doing the same. I don’t want to go and compensate delay by samples or ms, it should be straight out of the box in sync. And in my case this happens with Rytm MK1, Syntakt, Digitone…

On windows 11 i have 0 issues. I don’t think this is much related to Elektron / Overbridge, but much more into OS X current BS of sandboxing with drivers and whatsnot. Still would be lovely that Elektron would investigate and address the situation so we know where is the issue.

Have you managed to encounter a solution since January?

Unfortunately I have not encountered a solution to this Overbridge issue. I have an Expert Sleepers USAMO that spits out MIDI clock from Ableton that I use to keep my Rytm in time so my audio recordings from the main and individual outs of the Rytm are more or less on-the-grid.

I ping Elektron support every few weeks to see if they have an update on this issue, but every time I ask they say they are trying to get a system on which to replicate this issue. I’ll ask again and see if there’s any update I can post here.

Yeah like i have my ERM Multiclock on my desktop handling all that without any issue. I don’t need nor I intend to use OB on my studio, all is tight clocked and as it should.

But the idea here is to take my M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro on the go, with my Syntakt and record stuff on the grid as it should, without the hassle of having to wrap. I also got 10 cores, 16 GPU 16gb memory and 1tb flash… But I know this happens to more people with M1 Pro and 12.X System.

How hard is it to get a MacBook Pro 14 / 16" M1 Pro, with Mac OS 12.4 installed, and test this out? I’ve tried pluging usb cable with a simple usb to usb c adapter, tried with a HyperDrive dongle, tried with an USB A to USB-C 3.0 cable, all the same. I even tried to compensate by hand just now, and nothing. But it’s the suficiente delay to cause issues when playing with VST and such. Max I managed was to reduce from 0.007/010 to 0.004.

I also noticed something, not much of an issue I think, but OB Control Panel says 24bit, in Bitwig i put it to record on 24bit, but in Audio MIDI Setup it reports as 32bit… I don’t think this has anything to do, but well.

I’m going to ping support as well like you :slight_smile: pointing them to the forum here.

Let me know if you find anything

Haha we are in the exact same boat. I want to use my Mac and Rytm/Four on the go with Overbridge but this issue is preventing me from doing so. I also pinged support and will update this thread with any findings.

I went thru my old emails with them and the only thing they recommended was to use the MIDI over USB to sync…which obviously is not a great solution.

I’m trying to figure out how to get my system as tight as it can be (clock and latency).
Measuring this stuff gets tricky, and it would be cool if we settle on a few measures to compare.

I have MBP 14, and use Bitwig with DT and DN over OB at 48Khz with 128 samples.

When I record audio from the DT it’s dead on, but the plug-in reports 26ms of latency.
My guess is that this is recording latency compensation, but it seems to make no difference if I toggle that on/off. I actually don’t understand the reported plug-in latency in Bitwig, as when I’m working with the DT it feels snappy (even at 26ms). OB settings are 64 for plug-in buffer, and 100 for safety.

I do like you showed, and record a clip then zoom in and select the gap to measure it.
On my system the gap is less than 1ms, and I typically use a high hat sample to measure it.

One odd thing is the reported latency changes. Sometimes the DT plugin reports 26ms, and other times 31ms, and sometimes even 70ms! When I restart the DT, it goes back to 26ms. Do you guys also see it change?

Just got a reply from Elektron support when I asked for an update:

“We have been able to replicate the issue, but are still investigating. Hopefully, we will know more soon. We will probably need to talk to Apple, and possibly DAW teams as well. We still can’t see anything that we can do differently in our code in relation to this. ​”

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New Overbridge today… have you already tested it and checked again?

Cheers!

Not yet, just downloaded it. Honestly I lost faith in the software with M1/Monterey and just use my ER-M clock like others mentiond here.

I forgot to reply here…

Still the same shit, not fixed. I managed with a 0.24 delay on bitwig to have it more in sync, still on a 4 bar loop there are transients getting out rofl…

I mean, and not trying to be disrespectful here, but main goal of Overbridge is sync TIGHT with DAW… I still have hands to operate the machines thankfully. Plus, imho and experience when you are developing a tool you should look forward more than backwards… the adoption rate of m1 pro has been insane and it’s the future.

Meanwhile my syntakt which i bought to be portable studio machine (and live but that’s fine i don’t use laptop) is getting dust :smiley:

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Have not tested either, but I doubt it would fix the issue as the release notes did not mention this issue.

IMO the software is good, it works amazing on Windows. The issue that the support team referenced which is causing the issue on Mac needs to be knocked out before the Mac version of Overbridge is a smooth as Windows. Until then, I will be using my E-RM Multiclock for sync as well.