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AudioBus and Cubasis - timing nightmare!
Hey guys - so I'm finally getting to grips with everything now and the way all the apps talk to each other but...I'm experiencing a problem I can't seem to solve. Triggering synths in AB from Cubasis is fine. Recording them to audio, is not. 
Tried different buffer settings and MIDI latency settings but nothing changes it. The only thing that does is setting the sample rate to 48khz, and then they come in massively late and everything is pitched up.
Any ideas? This is the single biggest barrier for me on this setup right now. I mean I could just keep all my instruments live but I'd much rather work with audio.
What's at fault here; Cubasis or AudioBus? It can't be a specific synth because they're all offset by the same amount. Many thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this!
I'm gonna test it with an external interface and see if the results are the same.
Comments
Edit: okay I might have been derping; I was trying negative track delay. 20ms positive seems to fix it. Any chance of AB having some kind of latency comp? Or is this more likely to be Cubasis's's fault? Sorry for the quick double posting - still mega new to the iOS stuff!
Hey Chimp Spanner! Happy to see you here, I bought Imperio Verago back when your family was shipping them out by hand! Great stuff!
AUM has latency comp and could substitute for AB depending on your use case. It is a useful app to have either way so it might be worth a shot.
And you said you are using 48k, by chance are you using Helix as your interface?
Oh man no way!! Someone showed me the other day they still had the little notes mum used to stuff inside saying "thanks for supporting our son" bahaha. Bless her.
Yeah I've got AUM (it's brilliant!). So you're saying I could just run Cubase inside that and communicate with synths in AUM instead of AB? Hmm I'll try it out right now! Interface wise I'm testing it with a Komplete Audio 6 (can't believe it works!) but I've got an iTrack Dock on the way this week. I'll try AUM out now though and see if it's any different.
Wait, I've just realised a flaw in that plan; I can't bounce the instruments back down into audio inside Cubase, because they're loaded into AUM. D'oh!
The output slot of AUM works similar to AB but is a bit odd to get working the first time. So if I am understanding correctly, the (virtual) instruments are in the AUM input slot and you want to record them as audio in Cubasis?
If so, you have to enable the AUM inter-app Audio port in Cubasis first, then connect it in AUM. It should work just like AB once these are connected, with the addition of the latency compensation.
Oooh okay. How are you getting Cubase to appear in that slot? Do I need to be running this all inside AB or something? Sorry for all the questions (and thank you for the help!)
No AB required for this setup. In Cubasis, select an AUM port first and then assign a mixer channel to that port in AUM under the IAA/Audiobus menu in the output slot. The Cubasis port should show up.
Duuuuuude. That's totally nailed it! No latency comp required. It just works. Gonna experiment with this but I think this is the solution!!
Great! Otherwise (and maybe you've already discovered this..) but after looking at your original image again, you shouldn't need AB or AUM if you are just recording the VI/synth apps directly. Just load them each into Cubasis via the IAA slot and it sounds like you've got the midi channels all talking so it should be good to go!
Damn, it's somehow come back. I mean it's not the end of the world - now I know how to use AUM as an Inter App source independent of AB, that opens things up a bit. But I dunno. It's super flaky. Atm it almost feels as if the amount I have to offset is changing. This is just in Cubasis now. Anything from 10-20ms. Maybe I should contact their support...for what it's worth!
Aww bummer, FWIW I've heard reports of Cubasis having some issues but I haven't used it lately so I don't know what they all are. If you've eliminated AUM and AB and are still getting issues then yeah that sounds like the way to go. Best of luck!
Yeah man from what I can tell it's related to the MIDI side of things. If I just play an IAA instrument and record straight onto the track (which for reasons beyond me I hadn't thought of doing!) then it appears to be fine. It's only when it has to play back MIDI that the problem occurs, and then I have to introduce that 20ms delay. But, at least it works. Can finally make music with this thing!
I just did a basic test with a few notes only using Cubasis and Animoog but it is syncing up much better than what you are showing so there must be something weird going on. When zoomed in I have maybe a very slight anticipation on the recorded tracks but I can't notice it. You tried a device power cycle?
Sometimes Cubasis behaves more politely with the buffer size at 256
Thanks for the replies guys. So, I tried a power cycle but no improvement. This is just Cubase with Funkbox over IAA;
Same results at ultra low, low, medium latency. Bit depth has no impact. Only the MIDI latency slider which seems to work best at 20ms;
That's as close as I can get but its not sample perfect. In fact you can see it even drifts a bit. In any case, it's at least kinda workable now. But I will take this to the Steinberg forum as well. And I thought going Air 2 would solve all my problems haha.
Hey I tried it again this morning and I am getting same results as you are - and a slew of other issues such as tracks not recording and also appearing as if they are recording but then ending up empty - but I won't add additional issues to your thread. Granted I'm more of a live Loopy HD kind of guy so I've never done this before in Cubasis, but something does seem odd here! Also using Air 2 on 9.3.
Well at least it's not just me! I've started a thread over at Steinberg. See what they say - I'll let you know if I get any interesting info!
Edit: first response was telling me how to insert Funkbox as an IAA channel. *facepalm Pretty sure that's what's in the screenshot haha. I will persevere...
Hi chimp_spanner,
Replied to you in the Steinberg forum topic.
Gave it a check but simplified the workflow:
Please make sure that 'Host Latency Tweak' is set to 'Cubasis' in Funkbox.
MIDI and rendered audio do match as expected here (below please find a screenshot of my result).
I do not recommend to change the Output Latency settings in Cubasis here (feature has been mainly added for MIDI clock compensations).
* Please makes sure 'Unfreeze Deletes Audio Track' is unchecked in the setup/arranger section if you want to keep rendered audio files when 'unfreezing' frozen tracks.
Hope that helps.
Best,
Lars
Hey Lars, well first of all thanks for the tip on loading IAA as an instrument - I actually hadn't thought to do that, and it's way more like working with VSTi's in Cubase, so that's cool! As you can see from the screenshot below...
Funkbox exports perfectly with latency comp set to Cubasis but unfortunately not all synths/drum machines have this function (most don't afaik?) so something like iSEM will be frozen out of time. If the latency in Cubasis is consistent enough that Funkbox can compensate for it perfectly, maybe Cubasis itself could have something built in that counters this?
In any case the tip about IAA as an instrument (vs audio + MIDI) is a good one, and will definitely be useful for projects where I want to run everything in real-time, so thanks for that! For recording to audio though I think I'll have to continue using the separate tracks + latency offset in Cubasis' settings.
I am having an ass load of pain in the ass little issues with Cubasis.
Weird shit like tracks not naming or changing, record buttons turning off, and all sorts of pesky stuff.
Actually, I think I am having issues with a few apps, I just can't pin point which it is.
LINK has def added a few hiccups for my workflow as the kinks get worked out.
Actually - Animoog was acting up this am into Loopy. Shorting out and distorting.
Hi chimps> @RustiK said:
Hi RustiK,
Your experience sounds strange and should not be the case when working with Cubasis.
Please get back to me with more details (clear descriptions, steps, information about your device, iOS etc.).
Best,
Lars
Yeah gotta say aside from this one issue, Cubasis is pretty solid for me. If you're getting issues with other apps I'd try doing an iOS restore or something. Sounds like something's gone wonky!
What is this Cubasis host latency tweak, more specifically? I wonder if you might be doing something wrong there. IAA midi events are timestamped with sample frame precision, for each render buffer. You shouldn't need any "tweaks" there..
For CoreMIDI (virtual ports), outgoing events should be timestamped correctly (and in the future) to match the expected actual time for each event. Receiving the events in advance is a bit tricky, but doable (will work on this for AUM 1.2), to avoid jitter and misalignments. But easiest route is to go thru IAA midi only.
Am I the only one that read AUM 1.2? :-)
Back to the topic though Cubase for me so far has been very solid timing wise. All my problems with it so far have been user error and fat fingers! Lol
Tested with Beatmaker - aside from being generally kinda laggy, the recorded audio does start at the correct position, with no latency comp enabled in Funkbox. I'd try it with garage band to be sure but it doesn't do MIDI out. Any other software I can test with?