Adjusting MIDI latency in Ableton Live

Question

When I record MIDI tracks in Ableton Live, is there any way to adjust it so the MIDI notes I record are automatically shifted to their correct positions, correcting for the lag time on my MIDI adapter?

I can easily adjust the latency for sync/realtime messages, but this setting has no effect on regular notes.

I am recording my Juno-106 both on MIDI and on audio, but I want to record the MIDI so I can go back and fix a note here and there, and then play everything back with the Juno correctly in time.

Answer 1

Unless you're doing epic synth solos chances are you could easily solve this problem using the 'Quantise' function.

Simply right-click in the piano-roll and select the 'Quantise Settings' option: this will allow you to quantise right down to 1/32note triplets (IIRC).

OR you can even turn on auto-quantise from the Edit menu (Record Quantisation), which will let you quantise what you're playing as you play it, which can be useful in a live setting if your timing is a little off.

Answer 2

It sounds like you have found the lag adjust, and you also need to make sure the latency settings for the audio card is correct.

Also, I have been plagued by a bug in several versions where MIDI recorded notes get a long lag if monitoring is on or off (I can't remember which) so make tests with that, turn off and on monitoring on the channel you record on. I don't have Live on this computer, so I can't tell you exactly, but fiddle around and see if it gets better.

Answer 3

If it's the lag time on your midi adapter, then the lag should be constant throughout the entire midi recording... so just select all the midi notes in the edit view, zoom way in and move the notes until you can hear it's where you want it.

As for doing it on the fly, or in real-time I don't think there's a way to automate that, though I could be wrong. I'm sure you could do it with Max, but that's usually the case.