my PC USB Midi Interface has latency

Miscellaneous
1

I am running Windows 7

And playing/recording synths, like Roland Alpha Juno, Oberheim, etc. via Midi

I have a MOTU micro Express which is USB1 I believe

Also I got a RME Multiface with a Midi Port. Connected to PCI

I measured IN and OUT midi latency and have 5ms in and 5ms out on the MOTU

On the RME it’s zero ms, from zero to 1ms adding IN+OUT

I know this might not be related to Midiboxes (maybe also?) but here are the people with expertise.

So, can anyone state what it is about?

Am I beeing fussy? 5ms-10ms ain’t that much, but it add’s up with another 10ms audio latency.

Would there be a good option to USB Midi Interfaces, like old-school serial?

Or is only my MOTU effected from that problem? Is it the OS even?

some insight on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

moloxbat

2

Its a combination of USB, host, shitty drivers on sub-par hardware. I did some studies when I had a number of different interfaces to test with a Core8 as a measurement device and here are the results:

(TS= Timestamp on, DS= Directsound)

The RAW is a physical connection from in to out (which should be the length of the midi msg), the midiox test is a basic software loopback

You can see how much everything changes with the host as well as the driver. Most interesting though is how the Midex (which was a $450 interface at one time) degrades with more data and how the whole “LTB” (timestamping) is utter bullshit

3

Thanks for shedding some light on the topic! (…and very thorough measurement)

The GM5 seems to do a good job, special. not spreading so much. I am just wondering if my (not finished yet) SeqLiteV4 can act as a Midi interface with the same performance… Sonar is crap in that regard then, I am using FLSTUD and that needs to be checked

For future measurem, how do you get to microseconds? what’s the math behind that?

4

http://discourse.midibox.org/t/topic/2374