Please excuse the noob question here - I’m new to the hardware side of things.
I’ve been trying to get my (newly purchased) DN to sequence VSTs through MIDI and produce a consolidated mix between this and its own sounds.
I’m getting latency problems - no surprise to anyone here I’m sure. I’ve found that if I send everything to the PC and mix there, there is slight latency overall (bearable), but the two halves are pretty much in sync. However, if I try to master in the DN (i.e. route the output of the VSTs back into to DN external via USB, I get terrible latency between the two halves (about a dotted 1/32 note).
Are there any obvious things that I could try that might solve this, or is it a fact of life?
Would I be right in thinking that if I moved to a hardware solution for my MIDI-driven sounds (I’m considering the Blackbox), the issue would go away and I could route the BB output back to the DN without any latency issues? Clearly this would be an expensive mistake otherwise.
[If it matters, I’m using Cantabile to host the VSTs and Voicemeeter for the mixing; I’m NOT using OVB - just MIDI+audio over USB]
Well, latency is a fact of life with digital equipment. And it al depends on your routing and settings if it will create issues for you.
In your second example you will first of all have latency for the processing inside the Elektron. Luckily though the elektrons have a very minimal internal latency.
Secondly you will add latency by sending the audio to your daw.
Thirdly, you are adding even more latency by sending the audio back from the DAW to the Elektron.
In your first example you are not sending audio back to the Elektron and therefore you cut one source of latency. Therefore it is logical you have less latency with this setup.
If you replace the computer by the Blackbox then still the Blackbox will add its ow latency as the Blackbox is also digital. Maybe you can find the latency time that the Blackbox has online and compare it to the latency of your DAW? Then you will know if the Blackbox will be a step forward.
Personally I would advice you to have all sounds travel through the same signal path. This way at least all your sounds will have the same latency. That’s already a whole lot better than all sounds having the same latency.
One thing to consider is to add an analog mixer for routing your audio. Analog mixers do not add any perceivable latency and will be your best bet to cut the latency time.
Lastly, make sure that you have your buffer size set the lowest possible without audio dropouts for your soundcard, to make sure your soundcard is delivering the lowest latency possible for your setup.
Voicemeeter is probably adding a lot of the latency in this setup. It’ll be much lower if you have everything running through a DAW, and directly out through Digitone instead of Voicemeeter. The only issue is that in Windows you can’t natively use multiple sound devices in a DAW at once without something like Voicemeeter, but that’s where the Overbridge VST comes in handy.
Sounds like you have a fairly straightforward setup though if the Digitone is the only hardware you’re using, and you’re using it as a soundcard too.