Hi there!

New to PD and its really great to use. I have a USB MIDI keyboard which, in any program, has huge input lag, making it unplayable (we're talking quarter of a second here, which is huge in timing terms). This was the same in PD, until I opened Audio Settings in PD and started, gradually, nudging down the delay (msec) value. Since that, I get no noticeable input lag at a msec value of 25 (lower breaks with horrible input lag, higher obviously increases input lag because, well, its a delay), however the input lag comes back if I close the Audio Settings window. After applying and not closing the window, there is no problem. I also notice launching my email client with the window open created huge lag, but I see that as being normal, as you're putting more work on the CPU.

My setup for testing is as follows: USB MIDI keyboard -> PD -> simple input to output patch -> USB MIDI adapter (not the keyboard, a different one) -> Yamaha CBX-T3 MIDI sound module.

This system is running windows 10 64Bit

Preferably, I'd like to remove delay for ALL programs. Worst case I'd like to be able to use PD's midi functions without the Audio Settings window open.

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Clsoing the Audio Settings window and waiting about 5 seconds fixes the delay issue for PD., still have program delay though, such as Ableton.

@ahorner Great that Pd is doing better than everything else......!
As you have found out Pd delays the midi to match the audio.

If you record a midi track into a program is there a lag before the notes are displayed?
If not then it must be the audio output of those programs that lags.

It looks like you are not using ASIO, so it could be the audio that is delayed from your other programs.
With ASIO you should be able to get latency down to 2 or 3ms.
Many modern computer built-in soundcards will have capability for ASIO drivers.

You could try ASIO4All......... http://tippach.business.t-online.de/asio4all/
and then choose to use ASIO in Pd.
And then choose to use ASIO in your other programs,

David.

Some have found that re-plugging their usb midi device helps.
It can be a bad idea to boot (or even come back from sleep) with some usb devices plugged in already. Almost all should be fine though.

@whale-av Hi there, I installed ASIO4All and I don't get any ASIO input or output options when clicking ASIO (via portaudio)

@ahorner Strange.......
You might need to reboot the computer?
David.

@whale-av Tried multiple times :3

@ahorner Maybe your soundcard cannot use asio then. Unsure. I will do some research and post again.
Do you have an external soundcard?
Do you have any audio editing programs that can see the Asio4All driver, or a sequencer like "FL Studio"?
If you open the Asio4All offline settings window and click the spanner does it show your soundcard inputs and outputs?
David.
P.S. someone else had exactly the same problem 2 years ago........ but unfortunately it just "magically" worked before we had a chance to fix it..........

@whale-av I'm using standard Realtek HD Audio which comes on my motherboard, and I don't have any other software I know of which can look for this. If you know how to look for this on Ableton Live 9 Lite then that's an option

@ahorner I don't have it, but I think it's...... Options (or preferences) ..... audio....... choose driver....
David.

@whale-av The ASIO drivers work amazingly with no noticeable delay. Switching back and forth between DirectX and ASIO there is a huge latency difference. Still no ASIO on PD though...

@ahorner That's good news.
Try this fix..........Pd Fix.zip ...... Write down your current Pd Audio settings first.
Then try for asio again.
David.

@whale-av Nope. Tried everything in the readme and in the folder I thought could possibly work. Refuses to show up. This is PD extended 0.43.4

@ahorner Ok.
Try running this........ this.zip
You should then be able to open Pd audiosettings which should look something like this......

And then clicking on "(0)Microsoft Sound Mapper -Input" or -Output should give a dropdown list of drivers.

If it does not open Pd then it is because widows10 does not install Pd extended in the same directory as in windows7. Unless you can edit the batch file...... (you can change its extension to "txt" to edit it) I will need to know the path to where pd.com is on your computer.
David.

@whale-av That one worked! The path was correct, but the batch file did throw a few errors for gem.conf. Doesn't appear to have affected it in any way however. This fix also persists over PD restarts and there is NO MIDI delay whatsoever! Thank you!

Edit: heh -_- The only problem now is when closing PD, the ASIO4All driver is still running and does not stop... meaning no more standard audio. I can fix this by forcing PD closed in task manager however.

@ahorner That's annoying.
I imagine you have saved the audio settings (by just clicking "ok")...... which will then persist at the next start of Pd.
Is it keeping the driver open even when you just open a patch and then later just close Pd normally.......... without using the batch file? (you should not need the batch file again!!)
If it is then I will look for a solution.
That does not happen in windows7........ but....... ?
David.

@whale-av I have saved audio settings yes, and no I don't need to use the batch file again. Even after I have closed my patch and the console window, meaning nothing PD is left, the driver still remains running until I end it with Task Manager.

@ahorner Hmm..... playing around with settings I just had to use my own fix (the first one)....... embarrassing!
Interesting problem.
I use Pd a lot, with the MIMO drivers because I am just messing about building something or trying to help others.
When I am running a show I always start Pd with a batch file........ similar to the asio.bat that I sent to you. It sets all the settings and opens the master patch.
I do that so that I am absolutely certain that any changes I might have made in between shows will be ignored........ and I don't save the audio settings because I don't need to.
So when I get home and start Pd again I have MIMO drivers back again.

I had a look...... and I can reproduce your problem.
I notice that Pd.com stays running in the background.

Go to the folder pd/bin and open pd.exe..... then close Pd
It should now be fixed even though pd.com will always be opened by the patch (windows remembers).
It could be I should have used pd.exe and not pd.com in my fix file.
It will be hard to know without a fresh install.

David.

@whale-av It appears to be only ASIO4All running upon further inspection, not PD itself

@ahorner ....? I will look into it.

@whale-av Ah. Sorry for messing you around here, I looked at the running process path and yes, it is PD running not ASIO4All. it is an exe running, not a com however.

@ahorner OK. Now that I have seen it happen I might find a fix...... but it might take a day or two....
Try opening pd.com from pd/bin and closing it...... sort of the opposite of what worked for me.....!?????
David.

@whale-av After opening and closing pd.com instead of pd.exe, the console window remains open with ASIO4All still running, and displays the following output:

midiInOpen: A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system.
open: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Pd/gem.conf: No such file or directory
open: C:\Users\<removed>\AppData\Roaming\Pd/gem.conf: No such file or directory
open: ./gem.conf: No such file or directory
closing audio...

staying like this. If I close the console window with its close button, the ASIO4All driver does indeed stop, and everything is closed at this point which should be.