Hey everyone, I have been battling with the latency of Overbridge when using my A4 MKii/AR MKii and I think I may have finally found a solution that seems to be working incredibly well. Long story short I’m using overbridge for a bunch of audio routing but, I am monitoring straight from the Rytm. I have no real audio interface involved at all and am getting latency down to 1.33ms on an M1 Macbook. I have successfully been able to route all of the AR and A4’s tracks individually into Ableton and push a premaster from the DAW back out through the AR’s built in Comp & Dist FX then I am recording it all on the Master with virtually no latency at all. Here is how I’ve managed to accomplish this and the things that I think were causing my latency issues, just read the bold if your pretty familiar with your Elektron:
Select Analog Rytm or your OB compatible box as your Audio Interface for Output in Ableton and set buffer Rate as low as you can, 64-128 works great for me.
Adjust OB Input Routing & Buffer Rate in the Overbridge Control Panel App
For this you need to go into the OB Vst Input Routing Section and select Main FX L/R for one of the inputs. We will route everything from Ableton to this track on the input you selected in a moment. You’ll also want to go into the Overbridge Control Panel App and adjust the buffer rate to be the same as you set in Ableton.
Route Individual tracks into Ableton via OB Vst’s
To do this make a separate midi track for each of the individual instrument tracks. Add an external instrument to each track so that you can record and send both Midi and Audio to the OB Vst’s. Select the Overbridge.
Adjust Audio Routing in your Elektron’s Audio Routing menu in the settings
This is found in the global settings menu and you will simply want to tap all of the pad’s under Route to Main to deactivate them as you are about to route all of your individual tracks back into the AR’s Main Inputs after they’ve been processed by Ableton next.
Create Audio Track called Premaster and route ALL tracks in Ableton to the Premaster EXCEPT the track with the AR Vst
Make sure to switch the input of the premaster track to No Input, as it will receive all of the routed audio automatically. You can route your audio through whatever other process you’d like just as long as it hits the Premaster track before the master.
Route Premaster to AR OB Vst Sidechain In and select whichever input you assigned Main FX L/R
This should end up running your entire project as well as the AR and any other OB instances you may have through the Analog Rytm’s Master FX including the Distortion and Compressor. I LOVE THIS as it gives everything I put through it an amazing analog warmth. It is an amazing Master channel.
Route track with AR OB Vst to Ableton Master track so that you can record the final signal coming from the AR’s Master track.
Turn output off on master in Ableton
You don’t want to actually send the master to the AR as it could create a feedback loop but, you do want to be able to record the output. I tricked ableton into deactivating the output by selecting a pair of outputs in the config and then deactivating those outputs and activating another pair that I actually don’t use as I’m not actually using the AR as my interface I am doing all the Audio 100% through overbridge with no interface at all, Ableton just won’t run without an interface selected. Having the AR as the Audio Interface Lowers the overall latency of Ableton dramatically in the menu when compared to a cheaper interface or using the built in Mac soundcard.
Plugin headphones directly to AR or use Main outs to a hardware mixer or straight in to your speakers
This saves a trip back into the computer for monitoring as you are monitoring directly from the Rytm and is ultimately what I think helps reduce the latency so drastically.
Key Takeaways
+One of my biggest issues was using my internal soundcard for output.
+Use AR as Audio Interface as you don’t really need one, just a killer sample rate because of OB
+Set as low of a buffer as possible in Ableton to optimize software latency and make sure that the size is matched in the OB Control Panel
NOTE!!!
If you are using an Audio Interface for your Inputs i would still suggest trying to send everything out to your Elektron via OB and monitor directly from the Elektron as I think it adds a substantial amount of latency to get it back in the box for a second time.
P.S. VIDEO INCOMING
I will make a video covering all of this in the next day or two here and will post that as well when I get a chance. I greatly appreciate any thoughts or suggestions on further optimizing this setup or and stupid issues I may actually be causing without realizing it yet!