Recording emx into ableton live

Ponyrocker · Post by **Ponyrocker** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 4:06 am

Hey whats up guys hope ur all good
so ill cut the foreplay
i own an electribe emx and a microkorg ive been twiddling around these 2 machines for a while and have done some nice s**t and some ugly s**t
but heres the prob when i try to record the emx into my laptop i get a really sucky delay meaning that a beat sounds on the electribe and then in the ableton live audio track
what can i do ? do i need like a sound card or something?
i plug in the audio out of the electribe into the microphone jack of my pc i know this isnt the best but thats why im asking.
what do i need guys?
or better how do YOU record ur electribe tracks?

cheers

emdezet · Post by **emdezet** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:05 am

Just to give you two words which might help you find according ressources:
"Latency" is the proper name for that "sucky delay" you mentioned. And it has to do with "Audio Buffer"-sizes and -handling.

Unfortunately, as I have neither ableton live nor a Tribe there is not much else I can do for you. Cheers!

oost · Post by **oost** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:20 am

I spent the last few days messing around with ableton and my EMX.

I have ableton slaved to the EMX using my external soundcard as the midi interface. Initially I had terrible latency but this can be adjusted by going into the preferences tab --> midi --> then adjust the midi in settings in ableton until everything is running in sync.

I dont have ableton at hand to show you a screen shot but you should figure it out. If not will post a screen shot later

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 2:09 pm

If you click the little arrow next to the midi port your EMX is connected to in Live's pref's, you can set a negative offset to compensate for this. You'll need to play around with this to get the best value, and depending on which version of Live you're using, you might need to close the app and then reopen it before that setting will take effect.

oost · Post by **oost** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:44 am

I thought I had ableton slaved to the EMX with reasonable accuracy. It was fine for just launching a few samples from ableton in time with the EMX. Then I tried to record the audio from the EMX into ableton because I wanted to sequence my patterns in ableton rather than in the EMX .

There then seemed to be terrible latency in the recorded audio. I have tried adjusting the lag in the audio preferences but I cant get it very accurate.

Have people come across the same problems, and if so, what have they done to overcome it?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 4:49 am

Just keeping playing with the midi sync offset in Live until it's lined up right is all I can offer.

oost · Post by **oost** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:38 am

I had spent a lot of time and research trying to get it perfect but I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never reduce the lag when recording audio.

I will just have to make manual adjustments to the recorded audio...no big deal.

Cheers

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:34 am

oost wrote:I had spent a lot of time and research trying to get it perfect but I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never reduce the lag when recording audio.

I will just have to make manual adjustments to the recorded audio...no big deal.

Cheers

Wonna bet? I got no problems over here it's all about settings and a nice soundcard. I can get as low as 2-3 ms of ASIO delay. That's between in and out... now since just recording is only half of the delay(or so) it's really like 1-2 ms of delay which is NOTHING.

Mess with the ASIO buffer get it as low as you can without pops and crackles....

If it's still high, try running the ASIO 4 all driver. Sometimes the default sound card drivers (IE I had this on my sound blaster 24 bit external) double the delay for some reason. And only have a small set of settings to tinker with.

BTW in case you're wondering I'm running M-Audio Fast Track Ultra on a dual core 2.8ghz AMD Athlon 64 with 2gb ram.

oost · Post by **oost** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:57 am

I will try and mess with the settings again.

At least someone has gotten somewhere with it....a light at the end of the tunnel

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:17 pm

Many, many people have solved this issue, that's why Ableton includes that adjustment in the first place.

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:41 pm

actually the adjustment never worked for me.

The buffer really does depend on your hardware... back in the day when I used my laptop with a shitty usb sound card, I could not get a smaller delay then 20 ms.