Using Overbridge with an ARII and jack audio

Elektron Software Overbridge
#1

I know when we use Overbridge with USB, we get N audio streams, and we get a bit of latency (about 30ms worth). OB compensates for this via the plugin, and we don’t set sync in our DAW ourselves. This is all fine (at least if you’re programming and not playing).

The latency, however, was too much for me as a drummer for live play, so I shelled out for an OctoPre and connected the individual external jack outs via an audio loom. This works great for live play. As long as I don’t use Overbridge.

When I use the OB plugin, OB tries to compensate for a latency that isn’t there any more. And so if I want to play live I’m forced to turn OB off, and I lose all the plugin’s advantages: that seamless track automation, GUI control, total recall and so on.

Is there a way to use OB for control only, at the same time as using the individual external outs, without timing issues?

#2

In Ableton one can disable plugin latency compensation. Sounds like that d work for you. What DAW are you on and does it have that option?

#3

I’m on Logic, but it’s the Rytm plugin that’s doing the latency compensation. It doesn’t look like that’s a thing I can affect.

#4

AFAIK OB plugin works in conjunction with a DAWs delay compensation to do its magic. Give it a try if you have the option.

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#5

Do you know where you read that? My experience with Logic has been that it has its own fixed idea of what delay compensation to apply based on its knowledge of its own USB audio streams and that my attempts to counter that with settings have failed, but I’ve really struggled to find any reference material beyond the screenshot I referenced in my Logic templates post – which seems to suggest a single use case with USB audio only (with a warning: don’t use the DAW’s sync).

A long time (several months but you know it feels like years now) ago I saw posts here that said that older betas supported the external-outs-with-OB-as-control-only use case but that support stopped. I’ll see if I can find those again…

#6

I got this from experimentation. I m recording through a xone:96 USB interface and AR2 OB in parallel. AR2 records tightly on ableton s grid thanks to the delay compensation. But the xone96 channels are pushed early because of it. When i disable ableton s delay compensation behavior changes and it seems to me offsets from the grid are now what one would expect from the sample buffer settings of the xone96 and OB engine. They are now both a little behind the grid, which is expected with ADC conversions and USB streaming. I can t say whether Logic can behave similarly.

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#7

Thanks, I’ll try this when I’ve plumbed it all back in (I took the AR2 away from the studio to use standalone for a while).

I think the main problem is that to use OB you have to use the plugin. And when you use the plugin, the plugin assumes that it is always generating audio, which means I have to set it to No Output in the channel strip. But behind the scenes it’s still futzing with a USB audio stream I can see on the meter but don’t want to use, and adjusting timings accordingly.

All of this is against the guidelines in what was the beta startup screen to not use audio from the DAW and to not use your audio interface when using the plugin:

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So if the stuff you’re doing is working, it’s great and I’ll use it, but Elektron appeared to advise specifically against it, despite this use case apparently being explicitly supported in previous betas.

Please re-think this, many people have their Elektron hooked up to audio interfaces and outboard mixers and have no need for OB streaming but would like to make use of the UI without having all their other hardware thrown out of sync.

Does that seem to chime with your xone96 tracks getting pushed out?

@Dapifer, did you ever get an answer? That thread was closed so I couldn’t reply to you there.

#8

Yup and i can see why: i don t seem to be able to get both the xone96 and latency compensated OB to record tightly onto the ableton grid together.

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#9

It looks, like @dapifer said, to have been a capability that was specifically removed – that you used to be able to say to the plugin “hey no audio or associated compensation please, I’m using these external outs”. Which just seems crazy to me. Why sell a high-end drum machine with 10 audio outs and then make it so that you can only use USB audio with your pretty GUI?

I mean I can still use it all but it’s kinda annoying to plunk down several hundred for an OctoPre and then find that you can’t use OB for control or automation.

That xone:96 looks fantastic.

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#10

Love it. There s an elaborate thread on it in the forum.

For my use this limitation is not too bad. OB is a nice extra to me, no necessity. My main recordngs are through the xone. What i record via OB is extra material for potential edits later on. It d be nice if i could get both recording methods to align properly without manual editing, but it s not the end of the world.

#11

No, the end of the world is happening in parallel :wink:

#12

An experiment locally to a DAW with no Rytm plugin in sight seems to show the following:

If you set the Global/System/USB Config to OVERBRIDGE, there will always be pad latency to the audio outs (not sure how to measure but I’m going to say anywhere between 20-30ms); both the USB stream and the jacks. You must have it set to USB MIDI in order to get low latency from the audio out jacks.

And that means no plugins.

#13

Interesting. I ll try replicating this soon.

#14

Argh. Urgh, don’t. It happened once and now I switched over twice to check and can’t reproduce.

#15

Ok :smile:

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#16

I found a workaround, well with Ableton Live anyway. Using track delays. The issue was the fact that to use my Interface audio for hardware in, and have midi being sent to the hardware in sync then I had to use ‘MIDI Clock Sync Delay’ under Live’s Midi settings. So I had my Ultralite interface set to -60.0ms. Then when OB loaded it threw everything out, the (sort of) solution was to use Track Delay on the channel that the plugin was on and set it to +60.00 ms to compensate. Now I can use the plug in UI and Automation without everything going out of sync.

I wouldn’t say its a complete solution because with the closed beta of OB I was able to have it all sync along with with OB audio also, now I can’t so I still don’t understand the reasoning behind them disabling the feature but I can at least get some benefit from OB now. I’m just ignoring the audio side of OB now.

I don’t know of Logic has the track delay feature or similar?

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