Timing Problems with Virus TI2-Arpeggiator-Patches on Live 8.3 on WinXP

    Hello there,


    I'm having timing problems with Virus TI and now also with Virus TI2 while playing chorded arpeggiated patches (e.g. just preset L5 of the Virus TI2 Factory presets) in Ableton Live 8.3


    So while playing the arp patch the Virus runs sometimes slightly sometimes serverely out of the beat although the BPM is received correctly by the virus as the BPM LED indicates.


    I expect that it's maybe a problem of my audio interface (Creative Labs Audigy 2 :S ) which also sets odd (readonly) buffer sizes (192, 240) when I set the latency.


    The Virus doesnt like these buffer sizes reporting an error about "odd buffer size".
    So in Live I set buffer size to be 128 ..so that the odd buffer size is mapped to 128 I guess...which could maybe cause problems.


    I expect the problem could be only resolved by a real audio interface.


    Could you please suggest some for less than 600 $ / 500 € with external Box (Volume control and I/O) but with PCI(-Express card) which does a good and stable job with Virus Ti2 (on WinXP)?


    I still mailed access music support but would really appreciate you opinion about the probem and about proper audio interfaces that like the Virus TI2 :)

    Before you replace your soundcard check the following:
    For the arpeggiator to sync - please note that the arpeggiator regards the time of the first note-on of the chord as the "zero" time for the arpeggio, and it disregards the MIDI time grid, only taking the BPM into consideration. For example if you start pressing the chord at beat 2 of the bar, the arpeggiator will be shifted one beat. If you start pressing the chord between beats, the arpeggio will sound out of sync. Try to quantize the MIDI track that is driving the arpeggiated sound, and make sure all the chords start at beat 1 of whatever bar they first appeared on.
    In order to get rid of the odd buffer sizes, try installing ASIO4ALL on your computer, and use it instead of Creative's ASIO driver.
    These two issues are not necessarily related. Good luck!

    Hi,


    thanks for the reply.


    Sure, for the latency test I drawed the bar (1-3) instead of playing it to be sure that it's 100% tight.


    I tried asio4all with different buffer sizes but it only adds sound artifacts to the timing problem.


    I just compared the virus to the sylenth vst both with init saw patch and identical midi clip.
    (deep note = sylenth, higher note = virus)
    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34369176/latenz2.mp3


    Somehow the timing gap seems to increase over time..at the beginning is seems to be slight timing shift but at the end the timing problem is very obvious. ;(


    Any further suggestion? ?(
    Or any recommended audio interface?

    Unless you notice significant latency when playing normal, non-arp patches, I really doubt interface latency is your problem.


    Live is somewhat notorious for a varietyy of timing issues with the Virus (Access even blames Ableton for some such problems in the OS 5 release notes). I completely stopped using Live, and one of the big reasons was how poor the timing was on my Virus. I'm back on Cubase now, with no problems.


    All this said, have you confirmed that the arp patches you're using are DAW-synced rather than using internal timing (as the latter might account for gradually going off-time)?

    thanks for the tip...and as so often...my timing problem is soo random..


    just got some time to try it and there isi no timing problem over longer time comparing vst and virus..no matter which channel I use


    maybe a solution in my case is rebooting after 4h or so..