Tips For Achieving Optimal Midi Performance - Ableton Live Reference Manual

CHAPTER 31. MIDI FACT SHEET

31.6 Tips for Achieving Optimal MIDI Performance

In order to help users achieve optimal MIDI performance with Live, we have provided a list
of recommended practices and program settings.
ˆ Use the lowest possible buffer sizes available on your audio hardware, thereby keeping
latency to a minimum. Audio buffer controls are found in the Audio tab of Live's
Preferences, and vary depending on the type of hardware you're using. For more
information, see the Lesson Setting Up Audio I/O.
ˆ Use a high quality MIDI interface with the most current drivers in order to ensure that
MIDI timestamps are generated and processed as accurately as possible.
ˆ Do not enable track monitoring if you are recording MIDI while listening directly to
a hardware device such as an external synthesizer (as opposed to listening to the
device's audio through Live via the External Instrument device). Likewise, disable track
monitoring when recording MIDI data that is generated by another MIDI device (such
as a drum machine). When monitoring is enabled, Live adds latency to compensate for
playthrough jitter. Therefore, it is important to only enable monitoring when actually
playing through.
ˆ The DirectMusic architecture on Windows allows outgoing MIDI events to be sched-
uled by the operating system rather than scheduled by Live alone, so performance
may differ depending on whether or not you're using MME or DirectMusic mode. If
you experience timing issues, we recommend switching to the other mode. This is set
in the MIDI Ports list in the MIDI/Sync Preferences.
506
Selecting the MIDI Port
Type (Windows).