First off, I am so happy I found Gigperformer, I love it… Congratulations on an amazing instrument. As someone who started on an Amiga with tracker software many moons ago, I am loving it.
Please may i have some assistance with my setup up for recording with Gigperformer and Ableton Live.
When running Gigperformer with link enabled there is an additional offset overhead compared to running other ableton live enabled software with link enabled using the same hardware, audio interfaces and audio settings.
Setup is as follows:
Imac running Ableton Live as the Tape deck:
This is where I press play and the remotes start playing
This Imac is connected to a gigibit L2 switch for IP traffic and Behringer wing desk with 32 channels on USB interface. Channel 1 is outputting the ableton metranome to the wing console and which os then sending it back to the tapedeck on channel one out so the timeing is all as per the output of the desk.
Macbook 1 is connected via same gig switch and a foucusrite 18/8 audio interface onto the wing via a stqge box
Mackbook3 is connected to same gig switch and is using dante software interface to dante card on the wing.
Imac2 is using same gig switch and dante software interface to wing.
The time seems stable for all software but there is an additional latency for any Gig performer remotes i run (same latency for each with up to 3 gig performer remotes tested at the same time) compared to running ableton or NI maschine on the remotes. not changing hardware for tests just the software running on the remotes.
two recording groups :
First group of four green: one is with live on the remotes
Second group is gig performer on the remotes.
White track is the ableton tape deck metranome recorded through the wing mixer
FYI I made a typo on the track name recording imac2 for gig performer ( it should be gig perfromer not live.)
For reference I ran a test with NI Maschine synced via Ableton Link to see if there was some secret sauce that was ableton specifc. Mashine seems to align correctly with Ableton.
Thanks for the welcome. Working on a new album that is a mixture of old and new tracks that have
sections in Ableton and new instrumentation from playing live in gig performer. The offset is not noticeable when playing live on Gigperformer its when I am playing back some sequenced parts from gigperformer that the latency becomes an issue for me. i guess this makes sense as when playing live I am not tied to the metronome and any efex are going to be correctly synced to the bpm.
A drum machine VST on GP that starts when play is pressed does get the offset delay issue.
I havent checked yet too see If there is a scripting potential could adjust the link offset for gigperformer I would be a happy man.
OSC to from GP and Ableton is something I am keen to try out.
Plugin delay compensation is active on Ableton, I did not have any plugins running just the metranome, I gues it would be compensated too, I tried disabeling it and it was the same. tried adding an external instrument type instrument to live and adding a hardware delay to try and push the Live audio back in time to align with gig performer but it does not make any difference. perhaps I am missing something.
Next test is having the utonic drum machine on a Live remote and gigperformer remote playing the same patch and sequence
If I dial in 16ms of delay to the live track on the Wing console the Live track aligns with Ableton and all is good sound wise on the mix but its messes up my recording for editing.
I was also not very clear to me, but from what I understood, the MIDI file player, a drum sequencer or the GP metronome are slightly delayed. They keep in sync but are slightly delayed. As far as I know @pianopaul (and probably other users) makes a massive use of Ableton Live together with GP, having Ableton Live playing some backtracks. @pianopaul, are the Live and GP metronomes also slightly delayed in your setup? (We are talking of 16ms, which can be recorded and measured, but perhaps not obviously heard depending on the metronome sound used…)
Bu the way @Hudson, what is the buffer size in your GP instances?
Hi I used metronomes for the test rather than audio files, my thinking is the metranome for each product GP, Live and maschine should play back exactly on time for each product and reduces any potential issue with samplers. Buffer size is 256,
If I understand PianoPauls setup he is trigring back up tracks From GP too Ableton then playing live on GP . That works fine for me, no issue as I am playing an instrument rather than the sequencer playing an instrument.
When I use a metranome or sequencer inside GP the timing is off by aprox 16ms for drums it sounds like flams.
Another test I did was run NI Mashine as a native app and then load mashine as a VST on GP The 16ms offset is only there on GP , NI Mashine is aligned with Ableton when running in Native mode.
When you link GP and Ableton, did you enable the metronome in Ableton and in GP?
Are they in sync or do they differ When you use the same sample buffer and sample rate?
Yes, I enabled the metronome on each of the applications. The sample rate is fixed @ 48K by Dante for all remotes and the Wing console with the exception of Laptop1 which has a focusrite interface connected to the wing. Everything was at 512 samples when I initially started testing , I then changed the GP to 256. And thats how the test examples from the examples were run.
I did a test with just metronome in Ableton Live and Gig performer.
With Link enabled both start at the same time, but the Audio out depends on the Sample Buffer size.
As GP is not a DAW the audio is sent out with the latency caused by the Sample Buffer.
Ableton live is a DAW and therefore does latency compensation.
So for me it is clear that (depending on the used Sample Buffers) the sound output of GP and Ableton will never be perfect aligned.
On my Usecase Ableton Live is playing all backing tracks and click track and in GP I am playing the live sounds.
Sorry @Hudson, I tried to follow a bit what you exposed here, but I have to admit that I am a bit lost. What is exactly your concern with the delay of GP. Do you hear it or did you measure it?
If you hear it, with a buffer of 256 samples, we are talking about a delay of less then 6ms. It is difficult to notice it when playing, but when hearing passively (i.e. without playing at the same time), you think you have to be Extrasensory or choose the exact same percussive sound to detect this kind of delay. And if you can hear it, does it disturb? Because this 6ms delay is equivalent to a distance of about 2m between two audio sources.
If your measured it, than I would like to better understand how you measured this. What is your experimental protocol? So that we can reproduce your measurements with the absolute certainty of being in exactly the same conditions as you. And how do you interpret these measurements. For example, it doesn’t seem possible to me that you get the same results with or without latency compensation from Live. I also don’t see how you measure your 16ms. But it is normal to get a delay of around 6ms due to the 256 samples of buffer.
I checked quickly if I could here a difference on the Live metronome and the one of GP when using Link. But, I couldn’t hear any tempo difference or latency. Should I measure it? Would it make sense for you?
Hi David, the issue here is related to Link sync not the sample rate. if the first beat of the Link timing is offset on GP relative to the other hosts then the timeing will always be offset regardless of
the samplerate. My expectation was that link enabled applications running on separate workstations would have the same internal system beat and any changes to each hosts sample rated would pull the generated audio back and forward in time. and given the same sample and buffer size they should be approximately the same ( not all interfaces being equal) For example if I connect two Ableton workstations and a Mashine workstation and a Gigperformer workstation together via a gigabit network switch and run the same Drum VST on each workstation the ableton and mashine vsts are aligned while the GP vst is delayed by 16ms. This is what caused me too think there was an issue with the Link part of GP and the hope that there may be an offset adjustment available to pull GP back in time with the other link hosts.
Please do a test, I really do hope its something stupid that I am doing that can easily be fixed.
For the test all you need is two workstations, two copies of ableton and two sequecenced VST’s I used utonic as its light weight and can be installed in demo mode, alternatively use the metranome
Setup your sample rate buffer size the same on both hosts
Test 1: Load GP on both workstations and Link enabled with utonic and the same patch on each GP host and hit play, They will play back in time
Test 2: Repeat same test using Ableton as the host: same sample rate and buffer size as GP They will play back in time
Test 3: Load GP on one workstation and GP on another with same patch of utonic or metranome and the timing of GP is offset by 16ms
Just thought of a simpler way to test the link sync. I dont normally run Ableton and GP on the same host, the reason being that I run multiple hosts for screen estate i.e avoiding flicking between windows, sorry I digress a simpler test is too run GP and Ableton on the same host.
Test : single host with Ableton and GP linked enabled, same sample rate and buffer size and outputing on seperate channels to the mixer and then recorded back form the mixer on separate channels
Screenshot bellow of my recording of the metranome on GP and Live. The white highlighted section has timing information displayed at the bottom left of the screen approx 21 ms
Ableton and live have sample rate of 48k and buffer of 512
Test 1: adjusting Ableton timers. If I delay utonic in ableton by 10 ms and add 10 ms of plugin delay to the ableon preferences then I can record via the wing mixer with both ableton and GP in time on host 1
Test 2 is where it gets weird.
If I add in a second host with GP as the vst host and utonic as the drum machine same samples on all 3 tracks the second host has the offset on it but whats weird is the host1 running GP and ableton also has the offset where it did not on the first test , both GP on Host 1 and host aligned with each other but offset with ableton. Only change was to enable link on host 2.
