Why has the Maschine Controller itself a latency of ~8 ms?

Michael Kißling

I want to reduce my latency for live fingerdrumming. Every Millisecond is valuable. So I did some precise measurements.

I have two Maschine Controllers (MK2 and MK3) as well as three different PCs where Maschine is installed. I measured the Latency by recording the sound when hitting the knob hard with a microphone panned to one side and the outcoming sound panned to the other side. Then I could measure the real "knob-to-sound" latency very precisely.

With every sound card, with every PC and with every Maschine (MK2 and MK2), the measured latency was ~8 ms higher than the latency shown in the Maschine settings. So I ruled out the typical "too-stupid-to-measure" errors. One Example:

Processing Latency: 0.7 ms
Output Latency: 1.0 ms
Measured Latency: 9.5 ms

Why does it take so long from the finger tip of the controller until the signal reaches the Maschine software? I get the point that the sensor needs to trigger the internal controller, the internal controller has to send this signal via USB to the PC and then the PC has to pick up the USB signal. Did anyone have the same or different measurement results?

greetings

Michael

PK The DJ

8ms would be considered to be within the tolerance regarded as acceptable for "real time" performance. For many years 10ms or less has been the quoted figure.

D-One

What is your point of reference to say that 9.5ms is too much? have you tested other MIDI Devices and noted it's much shorter? Not sure how accurate that testing methodology is but I am also not smart enough to suggest something better.

In theory, Maschine should have a couple of MS more than regular MIDI due to having virtual drivers and/or background services that translate whatever protocol NI uses into MIDI, but it shouldn't be a lot, like 2-3ms maybe… Interesting topic tho.

Michael Kißling

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/197212#Comment_197212

As I wrote, I want to get the latency as low as possible. I need new equipment anyway and why not take it to the next level? Sometimes we are 3 meters away from monitors in live setups, adding an extra latency of 10 ms. I always thought that the Soundcard is the limiting factor and I need something better, but now I see that it is not the case and my Soundcard is fine. When we are talking about playing Maschine software ona Machine controller, I expect them to use their own internal protocol and not MIDI. They need to transfer images, light up leds and so on, so MIDI is definitely not what would make sense to use for submitting notes. I just want to understand where the Latency of 8 ms comes from. I am planning to compare this to other MIDI equipment, but this takes some time. Just hoping to find answers since I am curious.

So the question is not if I am personally unsatisfied with the latency, but if there is any chance of getting it down.

D-One

Sometimes we are 3 meters away from monitors in live setups, adding an extra latency of 10 ms.

Nothing wrong with optimizing but there's not much to do against the speed of sound, it's physics but Audio cables are way faster (plain electrical signal), maybe wired in-ears could be an acceptable solution for you? It's milliseconds VS nano, quite uncommon but if you're trying to shave any possible latency, then I guess it's an option.

 When we are talking about playing Maschine software ona Machine controller, I expect them to use their own internal protocol and not MIDI

Thats what I said and what they do afaik, you press a Pad and it tells the software what happened in its own 'language', then that needs to be converted to MIDI because that's the language Plugin Instruments are meant to speak. I assume this conversion is super fast, 1-2ms (or much less?) but theres no way of knowing for sure unless an NI dev comments. PS: they never do.

Since there's no demand for some sort of ultra-low latency MIDI, a direct special language was probably never even considered…. again: I reckon.

So the question is not if I am personally unsatisfied with the latency, but if there is any chance of getting it down.

Fair enought but my point was: If everything else has the same issue then dont expect to be able to do miracles, or if everything else is better than maybe there's an issue on NI's side.

AFAIK, as a user there's nothing else you can do other than:

• Using no FX that induces latency while recording/performing whatsoever, including instruments that might have fancy fx.
• Using the smallest possible buffer size.
• Read about your audio interface RTL values or test yourself using software, this is mainly for Audio I/O but it affects overall latency, sample rate's have an influence so pick the one with the fastest RTL from the list.
• A high-performance modern CPU won't hurt.

PK The DJ

Finger drumming - latency doesn't seem to be causing an issue for the likes of Fred Again or Buck Rodgers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdNceHal44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpmcA5tGBQE

I get the impression you're just looking at the number and deciding it's too high, rather than it being an actual issue. I notice you didn't say you were hearing any delay, so if there's no audible delay, it doesn't need to be lower.

Maxray

Does it produce the same results with Auto Quantize on? I use Auto Quantize, then add humanize from the variation menu and swing