Timing problem with Rytm in Ableton

Hi there!

I’ve a problem with my Rytm and Ableton. I use overbridge, my Rytm USB Config is on “overbridge mode” and I’ve connected my Rytm via usb to my Mac.

Now, my problem is that when I record audio comming from the Rytm in Ableton, it is always a tiny bit too early. For example, I want to record a kick and it is not exactly on 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 but a tiny bit before 2 - 3 - 4.

Anybody has some ideas what I could try / change?

greetings

It’s just an educated guess …

Did you check your latency environment? Maybe that Ableton overcompensates something or it is nearly a beat too late.

Hm. I’m really a newbie when it comes to midi / sync etc., but I’ve not changed anything in Ableton from its default.

Y not post this in the overbridge subforum btw? IMO this is more related to OB in general than the Rytm specifically.

Don’t follow the OB subforum that much myself (I prefer not to use OB most of the time), but I have a hunch this sort of stuff is discussed there constantly.

hello, I’m seeing this king of weird behavior too, I can’t move overbridge sound with my delay setting in ableton.

But when I measured the sound, it was 2 millisec earlier than what it should be.

2 ms isn’t really a problem I guess, only when layering with drum but in this case, you need to sample in the daw and layer very precisely.

How early is your sound?

Did you create a separate track to record audio in ableton, assigned the input to get to audio from the over track containing the over ridge plugin?
Did you turn on the delay compensation in the option menu in ableton?

Yes, Philippe-2000. I think I’m doing it like you said:
I’ve a midi track with the Rytm Plug-in and different audio channels where I assigned the Rytm outputs to (e.g., “audio from” Analog Rytm and “BD 1” etc.).
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to measure the time difference (how can I do that in millisec??). I only know, that the time difference is really tiny - almost not visible when I have a 1 bar track (without zooming it looks almost exactly on point, but when I zoom in, I can see that it is a tiny bit too early).
Where can I see the “delay compensation” that you mentioned? As I said, I did not switch anything unsual on in Ableton.

And, yes, it is a problem when layering drums. For example, when I use a kick drum from BD 1 and want to layer a deeper sub from BT 1 (sounds weird).

to mesure this, you need to drag a selection from the bar in ableton (exact timing) and go to the first wave of the sound, then check on the bottom of the screen, the duration of your selection is written.

delay compensation are an option, you can view if it’s on or off , you need to go to ‘‘options’’.

If you Record you’re not in the process to working creatively like overdub everything in loop and work on the top of it for a session… If you Record, have your file not as you want and THEN you forget your analog RYTM i suggest you to remap your record as you want with warp markers.

THEN if you try to have an overdub working session, it’s different.
Have you set Ableton and Overbridge exactly as it’s recommend in the manual (Appendix B: Setup Example) ?
Is SYNC is activate and witch mode you choose (Tempo, Clock, SongPos) ?
Do you have only Overbridge VST in your session, no more VST, no EQ, no compressor, no reverb in your session for now ?
Do you try with only Master output or BD first (i mean start with only the BD to save usb bandwidth and when you get what you want start to get more sync track then…)
Have you put an empty zone before for 1 bars… ? sometimes it can help to get things adjusted together it gives 1bars to things to get in time… i do that with my SYNC GEN and it works nicely.
Did you try to put 128 in Overbridge latency and Ableton Latency at 128 too ? (and 256 in both)
Make sure Delay Compensation is enabled. It is found at Options in the top menu bar of ABLETON.

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Ableton explains in there Knowledge Base that latency and jitter are a problem of most computers, because the internal timings for audio processes are not of a high enough priority. They have made the decision that latency is acceptable but jitter not. They say, Ableton Live checks during the recordind the time-stamps of all samples coming from the audio interface (here the AR/OB) and buffers and get’s them all in place correctly. This process prevents jitter, which would destroy any kind of groove, but cannot prevent latency too.

AFAIK the only workaround is, to free as much CPU for the recording (there are some CPU hungry culprits like “reverb” or some high quality soft-synths … to name one, Diva by u-he), to make buffer sizes as small as possible, and to check on each clip and do the required work manually to get the transients in place. If the clip is tight “inside” and only shifted little to others, then only a correction of the start/beginning of the clip is required to get clips tight to the clock.

It’s not guaranteed that internal latency correction measures of Ableton Live get this sorted out completely and automatically, or that an external tight clock could be the solution. In my setup I have observed time-shifted clips, midi and audio, many times including the AK and AR.

There is some timing improvement, if background tasks like WLAN, Bluetooth, downloads etc. are disabled. And get all “buffers” as small as possible. There is a Driver-Error-Compensation lesson in the help files and Knowledge Base that explains how to test your environment and optimize the buffer sizes.

Hey William and everybody,

I did not know about the appendix in the manual. However, my setup is exactly like in the manual.

The problem is more or less solved!

The “problem” is the buffer size in overbridge. I always selected 256, but with 128 it works good. Before, my “lantency” (as I mentioned in the beginning, problem was that the recorded sound was too early, not too late) was 0:00:006. Now, it is litteraly = 0 :slight_smile:

What I also didn’t know, is that it is recommended to switch OFF the midi ports in the Ableton “midi link” menu.

Thanks again everybody :slight_smile:

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128 yes i have that in mind :slight_smile: nice if you solved your problem.

Good to hear … now have fun :smiley:

Hello Soundrider,

For me the delay compensation inside ableton works fine, i never encountered issues, except the fact that sending external midi clock isn’t automatically delay compensated (this feature is simply missing for now).
that’s why you could need an external clock.

Concerning Jitter (really beginning to exist when you communicate outside of ableton), do you mean here that low audio buffer size lead to lower jitter?
talking about audio, but not about midi here?

Regarding both audio and midi, I agree that background tasks, WLAN, bluetooth, usb chipsets and hubs, operating systems, ect… all introduce jitter.

I can’t exclude that I did something wrong in my setup, but I have time-offsets using AR/OB with 128 buffer size in Ableton sometimes. The tracks from the AR seem after recording the audio not as tight compared to AR running stand alone. I mean not the single track but all eight if played together.

You are absolutely right that jitter and delay are much more an issue with midi.

Well, as I understood the Ableton Knowledge Base, it says that Ableton prevents audio jitter very well by sorting all samples according to their timestamps. This said, I don’t think, we have audio jitter in Ableton, but of the cost of delay. I think, if the buffers are small enough the delay also will be very small. But I am not an expert in this field :wink: It’s only an educated guess.

I too also have the same problem as the original poster, my audio when recorded is a fraction too early (unlike my other non OB audio which is a fraction too late).

The problem with early is the first heat is always clipped, there is no way to nudge a warp marker to fix the issue afterwards. The only option is to record longer to then have that extra time at the end which allows for the clip’s loop brace to be nudged, or start recording a few beats earlier. Option 1 works ok if I’m working in Clip view and option 2 in Arrangement view.

Both don’t allow for any live performance opportunities though.

Has anyone managed to solve this at source? I’ve tried track delay and latency offset but nothing seems to work.

KY

Hey guys,

I got the same problem here…when recording Rytm tracks in Ableton the first Bassdrum is alway corrupt. It’s just 2 ms too early. I tried everything I could imagine but the only workaround was not to use the first BD :frowning2:

Any ideas out there how to fix that?
Many thank,
Rob

Quick and dirty in a studio/recording situation … give one bar extra, like a count in and delete it later. Not the most canny way TBO, but it works.

Do you mean that only the first channel (track) labelled BD is too early ? If so, maybe you have an audio interface and you can route the BD into an input of this interface.