Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[opcode]

I have a weird latency compensation issue when using jamstix MIDI out in Cubase 10.

The setup is as follows:
jamstix generates MIDI notes ("MIDI only" enabled), which are fed into an instrument track that contains a drum sampler (BFD3). I have monitoring enabled on the instrument track, such that the sampler plays the notes generated by jamstix.

The problem:
If add a high-latency plugin to the audio inserts of the sampler (e.g. Waves AR TG Mastering Chain with 188 ms of latency), then it is more than obvious that all the notes generated by jamstix are delayed.

Observation 1:
If the MIDI notes are fed to the instrument track from a MIDI track instead of from jamstix, then there is no delay.

Observation 2:
If I record the MIDI notes generated by jamstix into the instrument track (in addition to the live monitoring), then while the recording is going on, all the notes are delayed, but if I look at the recorded notes, they are all in the right place. And playing back the recording without live monitoring, the notes are indeed in the right place (no delay).

Especially observation 2 has got me stumped. Ralph, do you have any idea what is going here?

[Ralph [RZ]]

Cubase may do things differently than other DAWs, I'm not sure, but this sounds like issues with PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation).
My general rule of thumb is not to use any latency-inducing plugins until I am at the mixing stage of the project. At that time, the composition is virtually frozen so I would export the MIDI from JS4 and feed BFD3 directly during mixdown and/or mastering.

This works well because most latency-inducing plugins are tools needing look-ahead such as mastering compressors/limiters etc., which are not needed until the final stages of the project.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[opcode]

I have found a great way to work around the issue in Cubase:

1. Create a bus (group track).
2. Route both the drum sampler (BFD3) and the jamstix audio track to that bus.
3. Place any latency-inducing plugins on the bus rather than the sampler's track.

In general, to avoid timing issues, it's always necessary to route the jamstix audio track to the same destination as the drum sampler.