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I just thought about an easy way to deal with latency in MIDI recordings and wanted to hear some opinions about it.

My application for midi recordings is mostly samples piano's from NI's Komplete 11. I use a Roland digital piano as a midi keyboard.

Suppose I want to record a MIDI piano track and use my DAW's metronome to keep time and that I have a total latency of 10ms.

The solution I came up with is: mute the midi track in you DAW so you don't hear the samples but just listen to the built-in piano sounds of the Roland piano coming' out of the piano speakers. This way you can hear the piano sound acoustically and have the metronome in your headphones. After the recording is finished just apply a latency compensation of 10ms to the track and you're done.

Seems simple enough no? Or am I missing something?

Cheers!

Bart

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  • I'm a little inexperienced in this area, but ISTM since you're dealing with MIDI, the thing to do is capture the MIDI data stream -- the Note-On/Off events -- and then render it to WAV offline so latency doesn't come into play at all.
    – luser droog
    Jul 7 '18 at 0:12
  • Well, it would kind of work, except you get used to the latency & learn to work with it on the way in - & the DAW automatically corrects for it on playback.
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 7 '18 at 6:14
  • If your loudspeakers are 10 feet away from your ears, that will give 10ms latency on top of anything from your digital audio chain. 10ms shouldn't be bothering you at all when making live recordings!
    – user19146
    Jul 7 '18 at 7:58
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    10ms delay in stage monitoring feels very different to 10ms delay in headphones. But it's still the reason why on stage I want my monitor CLOSE. It can be quieter then too.
    – Laurence Payne
    Jul 7 '18 at 10:34
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Yes, that is a standard way of working. Though, if you've got latency down as low as 10ms, maybe no need to bother.

But don't play to a delayed metronome. Your DAW should have routing options for the metronome click. Make sure it's routed to the system beep, or even to a high note on the Roland piano. It won't get recorded.

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