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Basic,

Can you post a short loop sample of what you're hearing? How "off" are we talking about? I certainly agree the emulated ports suck... I was very glad to find out about the "ignore midi ports" feature in Cubase SX.

Having said that, if you're used to sample accurate playback of VSTi drums, I don't think anything will be as good to your ears. You're always going to get the flanging effect. I think the simple answer (which is what I do) is to develop drum sounds on Creamware then transfer them to Battery.

The slight variation in timing is not much for regular instruments such as pads or strings or even bass sounds. ARP'd sounds I bring into audio as well to slice them and align exactly.

Listen, I'm a freak about timing as well and I think Creamware / Cubase is pretty tight as it is. In fact, as tight as any of my outboard gear ever was, but I don't think you're going to get what you want in terms of percussion.

BTW, aside from motherboards, we have very similar setups, so I know these cards can all live together.

I'm running a PowerPulsar, 1x UAD-1, 1x PoCo Element, Midex8 setup too.

Regards -

Hi there Sin,

Here is a sample of Kickme running along side a hat in the same 4/4 pattern, this goes way beyond a slight midi timing issue, at some points it can totally stray from sequence.

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=17&0

I am going to try a few things when I get home in a few, uninstallinbg midex8, correct the port filter I copied to actually being moved, make sure my sync options in Nuendo2 are correct, and also install SX 1.5x or what ever the last build was before they released SX2.x

I pray it works, I can live with a little bit of real midi latency, yes synth sounds make this far less noticable, but I figure using kick me is a perfect test, once I get that tight as possible it shold make the rest of the platform sound even better..

Where it becomes most troublesome is when using CW plugs along side of VSTi's, then it become glaringly obvious of the phaseing..

Have a listen and tell me what ya think, I spoke to CW support and they agree thats not the way it should be sounding..

Cheers!

With any situation like this, you have to ELIMINATE all possible culprits. That basically means you have to take the MIDEX and Nuendo2 out of the equation. You need to try another host.. I don't use Nuendo but I use Logic and the timing is spot-on.. never had a problem with it.

As Sinix said, you are never going to get sample-accuracy but it doesn't sound like the problem you're having is down to not being sample-accurate.. the timing I get from my Pulsars and also from others I've seen in a well set-up system is very tight.. sometimes it even astounded me, as for some reason the CW MIDI drivers have a pretty bad reputation, but I have never found them to be anything less than tight.

Certainly people have been making dance music with tight grooves for years without having to use sample-accurate plugins.. there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do the same.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dArKr3zIn on 2004-03-01 21:38 ]</font>

Heya Dark

Well here is where I am at currently...

I have moved the ignore port filter to the correct location, I have installed SX 1.x and same issue, I have tried updating all sorts of drivers aswell, same issue, I am getting it tighter, but its still not where I would say acceptable in 100% confidence.

I have accepted that there will be some real time midi latency, but I dont think thats whats causing the issue, I took out the Midex and tried using the CW ports, same deal, I went in through the CW in out from Midex 8 and at this point things sound better but I belive in my heart they can be alot better.

I have my PC slightly tweaked, not crazy stuff, but the general tweaks, I just cant seem to figure out what the issue is, I am considering un-installing N2 and starting over with no hardware attached, I would HATE to have to re-install the PC, I have some HUGE librarys installed things like the enitre spectrasonics library, that alone would take 4+ hours to install, and all the head aches of dealing with NI's authorization schemes, those guys dont understand people re-install now and then lol.

I have my PC set up as ASPI? mode, the board I am using is a Asus A7N8X rev.2, it has many many IRQs to go around, but right now, all my DSP cards are playing nice so I dont think thats the issue.

I just cant figure it out, when I listen to others CW tracks there midi timing sounds perfectly fine in a 4/4 style track, for me though something else is going on =/

Any ohter ideas after all the things I have said I have done so far?

Cheers!

I think ill DL a demo of sonar and see what a totally different vendors app does for me..

Cheers!

took the words right out of my fingers...

(actually I would try several hosts if you can get hold of them).

Well another night has passed, still no luck lol.

I installed a demo of sonar3 producers pack that was bundled in this months CM Mag, sheesh I was LOST, took me a few mins to run a small tutorial to figure out how to set midi channels and record, damn metrome would only play through the PC speaker, and my PC speaker is turned off lol so that made it even more difficult, finally I was able to sort of get a sample to play back cause sonar3 kept crashing and causing audio drop outs.

The result actually sounded a bit tighter than nuendo, still not 100% but I would say maybe 15% tighter than nuendo on playback, though I cant be sure since all of a sudden I would get jitter in the playback and then battery would only play the very 1st hat and not the rest of the midi (wierd program)..

So I said screw it and delved into all the stock devices and was goofing around, it all ended at 4am and I came to the conclusion for now that is: midi timing is crappy at the moment, its is for the most part un-acceptable in terms of percussion for any serious composition, but synth work is pretty much fine since we are talking a flanging like latency of the likes of maybe 30-45ms.

To me it just sounds like percussion fromn the CW card is chasing the midi, its trying to catch up and some times it does, then it will stumble ahead for a split second sound perfect and then fall behind, thats the best way I can describe it =/

If I cant get anywhere with this thing soon, ill finish this audio project I am working on with the lynx card, and then blow out the drive and install the PC one card at a time. I am running ACPI mode currently, so maybe ill try a standard PC install, though I dont see what differences it will make since all three of my DSP cards are playing nice together (thankfully).

If any one else has any ideas please share, I am sort of running out of ideas here hehe, I dont want to have to install from scratch since that will litteraly take 8-10 hours with all my librarys and authorizations =/

On a side note I am also running Win XP Pro, I am considering an install with Windows 2000 Professional also, who knows maybe there is some magic feature in it that will fix all my problems..

Cheers!

hi Basic Pitch,

If you do decide to install the OS again, you may not have to trash your existing set-up to re-install. Buy a hard-drive caddy system and use it for your C-Drive (I don't recommend a caddy for the primary audio recording drives). That way, you can try variations with different OS's, standard pc vs. acpi, and your different MIDI set-ups, all by swapping a cased-hard drive.

To keep yourself sane swapping C-Drives, you would probably want to make each hard disk a single drive - i.e. one partition.

A system on a partitioned C, can also be moved to a different type drive (a single partition, for example) by using Norton Ghost.

john

Hi Basic Pitch..

What are your system specs (in detail)?

My current specs are as follows:

CPU: AMD Athlon XP2500+
MOBO: Asus A7N8X Rev.2
PSU: Antec Truepower 430w Silent
MEM: 1G Crucial CAS2 PC2700
HD: 1x 80G WD ATA7200 8mb CACHE
DSP1: CW PopwerPulsar Plus (SFP 3.1c)
DSP2: TC Powercore (1.8? most current drivers)
DSP3: UAD-1 (latest drivers)
VID: ATI Readon 9800 PRO (latest drivers)
MIDI: Steinberg Midex8 (Latest Drivers)
OS: Windows XP Pro (up to date)
SEQ: Nuendo 2.1.25(? Released a few days ago)
-----------------
Misc Connections:

-USB Dongle (Syncrosoft protection)
-Logitech USB Optical wheel mouse (stock xp drivers)
-Microsoft Standard keyboard (stock xp drivers)
-onboard LAN which I keep disabled and only enable it when I need to run updates.

I think that pretty much covers all the basics, as far as tweak go, I have done the very general XP tweaks, turned down all the effects that XP does, disabled standard sound settings, turned of PX spwaker, doubled my virtual mem, did the powerscheme change in xptweaks, did the tweak where it wants to you set priority for xp tweaks to applications or what ever it was.

If I missed anything just let me know and ill be sure to post what ya need, also thanks for trying to help every onel, its much appreciated..

Cheers!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Basic Pitch on 2004-03-02 13:23 ]</font>

Is the creamware stuff sharing IRQs with anything? Even in an ACPI system, I think it's better for it to have its own IRQ.

I dont belive it is, but unfortunatelty I am at work atm and am unable to check the IRQ's.

A positive note is that all 3 dsp cards were working click/pop free now if I could just that midi thing down ide be in a state of bliss

Cheers!

Its unfortunate that CW midi drivers take so much flak, it seems that its predominantly Steinberg users that experience this issue.

midiportfilter usually (but not always) solves it, beyond this there's a thread somewhere on tweaking pci latencies for different cards. If you decide to go there I suggest changing the pci latency of your ATI gfxcard as its probably consuming a *lot*.

On 2004-03-02 13:18, Basic Pitch wrote:
...
-USB Dongle (Syncrosoft protection)
-Logitech USB Optical wheel mouse (stock xp drivers)...

I'd try the timing check without those, if possible - just to be shure.
2nd guess would be the stability of temperature - if the spread of heat doesn't go as intended, the CPU might react with a couple of 'missing' cycles here and there to reduce load.
On the Motu pages I've once found a couple of hints how they keep their timing more solid than (for example) Steinberg and EMagic - of course they advertize their stuff but at least the arguments weren't completely weird.
Unfortunately I can't remember the exact location

good luck, Tom

I am home so gonna start tonights round of checks and such, unfortunately the USB Syncrosoft dongle has to stay since its the copy protection scheme for Nuendo 2 =/

That leaves me with IRQ's to check and the USB mouse..

Will post once I try all this tonight...

Cheers!

the dongle is no problem.if it just won't work right,you'll have to start over. you could try to reinstall over the old install,even the os can be done that way.(not the best way,but....)

i have sx and it works great,so it should work..........

Hi Basic
I have been reading this thread with interest. I am a little confused where you think the timing problem might be. Are you saying there is a difference between external midi stuff triggered from your midex and 'internal' midi SFP stuff? I use a midiman 8x8 with SFP and SX2 with no obvious problems. If you can describe a simple test proceedure that will cause you problems, I can then try and repeat it on my set-up.
Regards
Kenf

Hi Ken,

The main problem is I am not 100% certain where the midi goes wrong, but Ill tell you exactly what I am usuing as a test subject

- Native Instruments Battery: Assign Pad (1) a 909 Cls Hat and play a simple 4 bar loop with the hat hat in a standard 4/4 kick drum pattern..

- Adern Kickme: played in the exact same pattern 4/4 dance style kick, I used patch (0) or what ever the very 1st kick is, its quite snappy.

This shows the timing clearly out of sync,as I can hear it moving all over, if you listen to the link I provided you will hear it easilly

I have tested this using (2) methods, emulated ports from CW to Sequencer out, and also midi A to seq using output (8) of my Midex8 to the input of the CW midi.

This is not nearly as noticable with synths and bases, but of course I hear it since I know its there lol. After 12 years of DJing I can hear this sort of phasing very easilly and I can accept some form of raltime midi latency, but this sort of degree hinders the possibility of of any real serious production imo.

On a side note, I did spend the evening tweaking the crap out of XP and also made my 1st own routing enviorment, pretty amazing, I was able to get 16 stero tracks to be able to rout from Nuendo2 into the CW mixer and control all my multifx(s) boxes and mixers with out issue, it looks, feels, and sounds pretty nice.

I had a alot of fun just doing that since I got to tired of trying to figure out the midi issue lol..

I am pretty much coming to the end of the road as far as ideas that I can think of, I alsospent a few hours on the phone with CW support, but we couldnt get any difference in timing. I also checked the IRQs last night and all - PCI Buss, Pulsar, UAD, Powercore, ATI Video are on there own IRQs as it seems since I am in ACPI mode.

If I have to I will re-install the OS and try a standard PC build but I am unsure of how this will truelly effect the system since it appears to be stable asside from the timing.

Any one else have any ideas? Or maybe some one with a similar set up could record some audio of the same test so I can hear what your timing sounds like compared to mine, providing you use the same set up, hat in abttery kick from adern?

Cheers and thanks again all.

it's not an acpi problem,although a new install may help.as i said, xp,sx and sfp timing is TIGHT here.....

Hi Basic
What happens if you compare the outputs with the metronome in Nuendo? You could record each output to an audio track and then compare the timing using the editor. This should show which one in 'off' the beat. I will have a go later on my system.
Regards
Kenf