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Negative Track Delay Database / Spreadsheet

David Kudell said:
Ok, here's a Google Sheets doc I have created. I'll be adding to it with instruments I have as I go. If you're interested in adding to it, let me know and I can give you write access.

I don't have the following, so if you want to add those values, let me know:
Vienna, East West, Audio Imperia, Musical Sampling, Infinite Series, Heavyocity, Cinesamples.

Click to expand...

I do like the idea. As a suggestion, could you pin the latest version to the first post too? This means anyone searching for something similar is likely to find it rather than digging through the posts (although, it is just a thread page now), but the thread could get longer/changes to URL address / doc could go to V2 / etc

Nice and structured!
 
This might be a stupid question, but out of curiosity, for what reason do you guys need to setup a fixed track delay ? When I record a line, I try to play before the beat, to compensate the latency of a library. The first note of a legato patch usually has less delay than the following legato transitions and so on. Or do you only use step input or hard quantize ? Or do I miss an important point maybe ?
 
And Spitfires Extended Legato patches for example have different delays depending on if you trigger the staccato overlay or not. Less delay for the hard attack notes, and much longer if you only trigger a sustain or legato transition. Usually the first notes in a legato phrase will have a shorter delay than the following etc.
 
Heinigoldstein said:
This might be a stupid question, but out of curiosity, for what reason do you guys need to setup a fixed track delay ? When I record a line, I try to play before the beat, to compensate the latency of a library. The first note of a legato patch usually has less delay than the following legato transitions and so on. Or do you only use step input or hard quantize ? Or do I miss an important point maybe ?
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If you play everything in live and really learn to play each patch and compensate with your playing, or if you’re fine with dragging notes in the piano roll, none of this really matters as you say.

But if you want to quantize your playing, want stuff on the grid, want to be able to change between patches and have stuff line up or work across multiple patches, or program phrases instead of playing them, it does.

So I guess it depends on how you work. And everyone works differently. Some are more player/performers, whereas other are more programmers. Some have less grid-OCD, and some have more. ;)
 
@David Kudell, is this the Berlin Woodwinds Legacy or Revive ?
Didn't you notice a difference between clarinet 1 and 2 (Revive), especially on the shorts ? Those instruments really confused me when writing staccato and staccatissimo.

Oh, and thanks for this initiative !
 
mybadmemory said:
I think this will work for some developers that are consistent with these things, but some are not. Spitfire for example usually differ, not just between instruments, but also between articulations, and even between velocity layers (by design though).
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Thats exactly what i found when going through the BBCSO, to the point that it would mean every single instrument\articulation option would have to have it own track to be able to set the delays
 


Anne-Kathrin Dern does a great job of explaining negative track delays at 5:09 in this video.

Let's not make this thread a debate on the merits of using negative track delays. You don't need to use this workflow, either way of working is valid and I've written plenty of music without using negative track delays. This thread is for those who do want to work this way to save a bit of time and help each other out.
 
Germain B said:
@David Kudell, is this the Berlin Woodwinds Legacy or Revive ?
Didn't you notice a difference between clarinet 1 and 2 (Revive), especially on the shorts ? Those instruments really confused me when writing staccato and staccatissimo.

Oh, and thanks for this initiative !
Click to expand...
This is Revive. That's my bad, I figured out Clarinet 1 and assumed 2 and 3 were the same...so looks like we need to check every single instrument.
 
David Kudell said:
Ok, here's a Google Sheets doc I have created. I'll be adding to it with instruments I have as I go. If you're interested in adding to it, let me know and I can give you write access.

I don't have the following, so if you want to add those values, let me know:
Vienna, East West, Audio Imperia, Musical Sampling, Infinite Series, Heavyocity, Cinesamples.

Click to expand...

Thanks for creating this!
 
mybadmemory said:
Plus every velocity / dynamics layer for each articulation of each instrument. :)
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This workflow is for single articulation/track.

It's not as hard as it sounds. Take CSS for example. Using standard mode, the medium delay is 250ms. So you play your line in, quantize, and set the velocity of your notes to between 0-64. Takes a second and now all your notes line up. If your first (non-legato) note is early, you can just move it forward a bit, but still better than moving all of the notes manually.
 
DovesGoWest said:
Thats exactly what i found when going through the BBCSO, to the point that it would mean every single instrument\articulation option would have to have it own track to be able to set the delays
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Yes it seems at some point, a composer needs to decide whether to invest time trying to get exact track delay numbers, or just play it in using something playable and then swap it out for the desired articulation and drag by hand. I rather enjoy dragging the MIDI by hand (without snapping enabled) because there can be very subtle differences in sound and it's easy to get the sweet spot that way.
 
David Kudell said:


Anne-Kathrin Dern does a great job of explaining negative track delays at 5:09 in this video.

Let's not make this thread a debate on the merits of using negative track delays. You don't need to use this workflow, either way of working is valid and I've written plenty of music without using negative track delays. This thread is for those who do want to work this way to save a bit of time and help each other out.
Click to expand...

Well said, David. Really appreciate the sentiment.
 
David Kudell said:


Anne-Kathrin Dern does a great job of explaining negative track delays at 5:09 in this video.

Let's not make this thread a debate on the merits of using negative track delays. You don't need to use this workflow, either way of working is valid and I've written plenty of music without using negative track delays. This thread is for those who do want to work this way to save a bit of time and help each other out.
Click to expand...

Remember that the only thing that needs to be adjusted is the sample attack time of the start of each note. The rest of the midi performance, including NoteOff and various CC expressions needs to remain on the grid!

Using Negative track delay is a simple solution, however please be aware of the following problems that will still exist and you need to be aware of, with or without this solution:
  1. NoteOff events should NOT be negative delayed. Only the NoteOn. If you use negative track delay, then all your notes will be ending a little early, which of course you can manually fix, but now you're back to fixing every note. that might in some cases also affect legato modes in undesirable ways.

  2. CC, AfterTouch and PitchBend events should also generally not be negative delayed. You want CC11, CC1, etc..to perform expression on the performance exactly to the grid, not made early with negative track delay. The exception is that if you're using a CC as an instrument switch (instead of NoteOn Keyswitch), then they should be negative track delayed, along with NoteOn's. Same goes for PC messages which most likely are functioning as key switches
The jist of it is that you really only want negative track delay to affect NoteOn, PC and possibly some CC switch events. Everything else should go through on the grid without negative track delay.

You can work around some of that by at least putting all your CC and PitchBend expressions on a separate track without negative delay. You could potentially move aftertouch to another track also, after recording it.

Well, in some sense you can program your CC expressions and Pitchbend using your ears after setting the negative track delay...but visually they will appear wrong compared to notes, because of the negative delay effecting everything. It can be made to work with fuss.

NoteOFF, however, is probably going to be mixed on the same track as the matching NoteOn, for good reason, so there is a dilemma there.
 
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So is this Negative Track Delays something under Contract with
the NSA and so secretive? Why the damn developers don't chime in?
There is some Libraries that have it in the Manual but most don't.
This thing is becoming so ridiculous, it is the most secretive thing
in Orchestral Music work and Libraries.
 
Well the shared DB of known latencies is a good idea on this thread. it will take some time for some of us to make proper measurements and contribute to the data, but hopefully it can be kept up to date and I agree will be very helpful. it may even take a while before there is universal agreement about the values to use in some cases.
 
David Kudell said:
Ok, here's a Google Sheets doc I have created. I'll be adding to it with instruments I have as I go. If you're interested in adding to it, let me know and I can give you write access.

I don't have the following, so if you want to add those values, let me know:
Vienna, East West, Audio Imperia, Musical Sampling, Infinite Series, Heavyocity, Cinesamples.

Click to expand...



All of the patches in our libraries have the exact same pre-padding default value of -125 ms and you can control the amount of pre-padding with our sample start feature (between -250 ms all the way to 0 ms) :D
 
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audioimperia said:


All of the patches in our libraries have the exact same pre-padding default value of -125 and you can control the amount of pre-padding with our sample start feature (between -250 all the way to 0) :D
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Wonderful, that makes it very easy. I have yet to have the pleasure of using any of the Audio Imperia libraries but hopefully I can rectify that someday. 😉
 
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