When using the Analog Four VST plugin in Live, i’m noticing Maschine becomes unplayable due to added latency. I also tested using my OP-1 and Push 2 as a controller and found the same issue. The latency is minimal but enough to make playing in time difficult.
I am using the A4/OB via a hub, however it’s just the one OB instance so before I shell out for a Overhub, I wanted to grep the users here and see if anyone’s got a suggestion.
My sound card is plugged directly into my Macbook, and the A4 & Maschine are sharing a hub, along with Push 2 and an OP-1. (a cheap Insignia hub, most likely non-MTT)
Delete the A4 plugin from my session, problem goes away. Changing sync method doesn’t affect the problem, and both Ableton and A4 plugin are set to the same buffer size.
TIA!
Maybe there is an opportunity to check out, whether the hub is the culprit only.
Your setup seems to hook up all gear via one hub, right? I would suggest a test and use the A4/OB and Maschine or alternatively Push on the hub only and remove everything else. AFAIK MTT makes a difference, if a high bandwidth is required from various sources/destinations. The A4 needs much bandwidth for sure, because it transmits audio, but a Midi controller like Maschine should fly under the radar.
If you use A4/OB with one voice active only, Maschine as the controller, and everything performs fine, re-connect the other gear piece by piece and watch the latency. If the amount of gear connected or voices used increase the latency, an MTT supporting hub might be your solution.
But if you experience unaccaptable latencies with a very reduced setup too, then either the hub is dramatically slow by itself (USB-1), or OB might just not perform as needed in your digital environment.
AFAIK there are two “buffer sizes”. One is dedicated for audio and one for Midi. Typically a DAW let you set the audio buffer … plug-ins and the DAWs tend to use the same buffer size automatically. Have you checked the buffer size of your setup? If it’s 256 and above, then latencies are to be expected just by this setting. I don’t now for sure, but I think a buffer size below 128, 64 or even lower is required to support very low latencies. If you have heavy processing inside Ableton (other plug-ins, reverb is always hard on CPU) you may have set the buffers to unload your CPU to get rid of those digital glitches, increasing the latency hereby. Just check this too.
It’s also possible theoretically that your experience is a mix of issues 
, but my suggestion is to isolate the culprit and then cope with it 
Just an idea on “sync method”. Typically the sync is done via midi and if the clocks are tight enough you should not run into problems with “latencies”.
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Hi, and thanks for the reply.
All of these are things I’ve tried, apart from eliminating the hub because it’s necessary to use my setup the way I want to.
- I’ve tried disabling voices/inputs/outputs both on my sound card and in Overbridge Control Panel.
- I’ve got the buffer size set to 128 in both Ableton Live and the A4 plugin.
- I’ve tried changing the clock/sync mode in the A4 plugin as well to no effect
I have a Macbook Pro with only 2 USB ports, so I can’t bypass the hub and still have the A4, sound card, and a MIDI controller such as Maschine unfortunately. So Probably Overbridge will have to go, unless a better hub solves the problem. (I was mainly looking to use it for total recall reasons.)
Sad to hear that there wasn’t a simple way to solve it.
Maybe you could contact some guys at Electron and tell them about your experience. I am not sure that they are following every thread here in the forum. If it’s a software issue inside OB, there might be a chance that they listen and take care of it …
I was hoping to find a solution for this as well, but so far I haven’t.
I have a Macbook but I’m using it with the PC right now with my Fireface 400. Plugged into USB port directly into the computer.
The other issue I’ve found is that if I want to sequence the A4 from Live (as a multi timbral synth) the latency is enormous. If I sequence my other hardware synths the latency compensation I need is about 4-5ms but the A4 (connected via Overbridge) needs about 50ms compensation to stay on grid.
I was going to switch from A4/AR/OT to A4/AR/Push2 but the latency killed it for me. It’s too bad, I spent a bunch of time getting my Ableton Live template project setup to do everything I use the OT for. The only thing I couldn’t quite nail was finding a workflow as quick as the OT for real-time sampling and slicing. In Live, you have to sample, move to new track (simpler), then slice. You can’t have slices setup in advance and drop a sample onto it like you can with a flex machine.
Opted to ditch Overbridge and just stick to my A4/AR/OT setup. Much simpler. No latency to overcome. No annoying errors from time to time about my machine having the wrong OS version, etc. No headaches trying to work out audio routing.
I think I will add a Launchpad Pro to use as a pad/scale controller for the A4 for getting the most out of multimap mode and covering for my lackluster keyboard skills.
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, but my suggestion is to isolate the culprit and then cope with it 