Overbridge latency in Ableton Live

Dive in, get your hands dirty, and build your own midi controller for ANY midi device in what ever daw you use. Its not rocket surgery.

Then just use the analogue out…

If you customize it to your way of working you wont regret the time spent.

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You would still have the same problem.

For example, say you are only using the Heat with OB. But, you are, say, playing your guitar through your DAW using Guitar Rig, or you are playing Diva with a MIDI controller.

You are going to feel that latency in those cases unless you disable the OB plugin.

There’s no escaping the latency if you use the OB plugin. Period.

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you can plug in a midi keyboard to the any of the boxes and play them without the sequencer, just gotta make sure the channels are correct.

Programmers also do have latency issues by the way, when tracking it will drift off beat if you dont setup ableton correctly and your downbeat will not line up.

We are going around in circles. See my post above.

Fine, hookup a MIDI controller to your A4. Great.

Now, try playing any other instrument through your DAW, like a guitar or synth plugin. Enjoy that 30ms latency.

Your point about syncing is irrelevant here. There are multiple ways to solve that, which are outside the scope of this thread.

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yeah but this isnt an Elektron problem, is a problem with the technology in general.

The point of Overbridge is to make these boxes like hardware plugins and reduce the gap between the hardware and the computer.

With a 30ms latency, that vision falls short.

As I explained many posts above, I think there is a happy medium, but I think Elektron does not see that as a priority or their users don’t or both.

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I think there’s a chance you are putting the cart before the horse considering these plug-ins are in BETA.

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And the laws of physics

image

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I hope so. Not feeling too optimistic though.

according to this my DT should be able to swim and fly.

Yeah if my maths are correct the best way to decrease latency is to play fully submerged underwater :thinking:

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I’ve heard that if you play your Elektron in space in a black hole, you then have the problem of the sound appearing at your ears before you have even played it :loopy:

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Let’s keep things on topic please,.

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This is what I mean except the adding OB part. You’d have to use program changes etc. Via midi with a midi foot controller for instance. Using it like a regular hw box.

As has been said by me and multiple others this is an issue with technology in general. Gotta work around it or move on to other solutions that will get closer to what you are trying to achieve. :slight_smile:

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Oh yes of course.
Well in fact I already use 15 out of 16 hardware outputs on stage so I would need to go mono.
But there are other more significant issues :

  • the point of the plugin is also to allow flexible and contextual routing. Still doable with mix busses but not as easy.
  • not as easy and clean to setup as one usb cable

My soundcard from 2001 has 4ms latency. Basically the last 8 years or so anything on the market soundcard-wise has aimed at below 10ms.

When you say this is an issue with technology you are basically saying Overbridge is an impossibility. Try fingerdrumming with 30ms latency, all drumhits will be one step from where you wanted them more or less. Overbridge, if latency doesnt lower bec technological restraints, should imho only be aimed at tracking, never for composition or live play. Or add something like Access’ live-function.

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Couldn’t latency be solved by sending clock signal xy milliseconds earlier to the Elektron devices? I do that with my TR-8S in the Ableton midi settings (offset to around -20ms) and it works great.

It would be awesome if the Overbridge plugins would allow to set a clock offset.

This of course would only work with the sounds created inside the boxes. Audio routed from the audio inputs would still have a latency.

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latency compensation works fine, thats not the issue. The issue is when you play live, keys or pads, the sound has 30ms latency making it unplayable through overbridge.

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It might not be possible to get it lower than 30ms. IIRC, my Virus (long sold off) had about 80ms of latency, and the Live button had its own problems.

There has to be a latency penalty with these cases. You have to add latency for all the extra round-trip communication.

With a normal synth, when sequencing with Ableton’s External Instrument device, I think it adds latency which is about equal to your audio interface’s round trip latency. Overbridge probably has to be larger than that (double?), since it is also sending audio and other data back, ostensibly after your audio interface.

It is a massive engineering task, and what Elektron has already done is impressive. My whole thing (argument?) appreciates and recognizes that.

As I stated years ago in this thread, I just wish to have the OPTION to use the OB plugin, for only control and clock, which might hopefully include a much lower latency.

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If 30ms is an absolute amount, you should at least mention this for machines with performance options like keys or pads, as those will not function properly in combination with Overbridge. Aiming Overbridge solely for tracking purposes would be more realistic, and is how I use OB1.

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