negative delay on track possible?

[john doe]

Hi,

is it possible to set a negative delay for the an individual track? This feature seems to exist in Logic for quite some time. Do you know what I mean?

Thanks and greets

[Argle]

Absolutely, the JS time_adjustment plugin. Use it all the time for that purpose.

[EvilDragon]

That works only for audio, though, IIRC. For MIDI it's not possible yet, AFAIK.

[kindafishy]

What's a negative delay, and what's it used for?

[john doe]

thanks, I will try that plugin. I need it for a midi related matter, though. I want to send automated midi messages to my midi gear and have to compensate for some delay.
Well, I´ll see...

Thanks and greets

[EvilDragon]

Originally Posted by kindafishy

What's a negative delay, and what's it used for?

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=125711

[Argle]

Originally Posted by john doe

thanks, I will try that plugin. I need it for a midi related matter, though. I want to send automated midi messages to my midi gear and have to compensate for some delay.
Well, I´ll see...

Thanks and greets

Oh. I think you're screwed then. time_adjustment is for audio.

[Argle]

Originally Posted by kindafishy

What's a negative delay, and what's it used for?

I use it a lot for orchestral work, to compensate for the soft attacks of the instruments and get the timing for everything nice and tight. Without having to manually shift all the notes backward in time.

[john doe]

Oh. I think you're screwed then.

That´s putting it bluntly

But it´s ok. Just tried it and it doesn´t work, as I expected. But the approach doesn´t seem totally wrong to me. Isn´t there another plugin like that out there that can do what this plugin does, only for midi?

Thanks and greets

[EvilDragon]

Can't be done with JS, I reckon.

[kindafishy]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=125711

Originally Posted by Argle

I use it a lot for orchestral work, to compensate for the soft attacks of the instruments and get the timing for everything nice and tight. Without having to manually shift all the notes backward in time.

Thanks guys. Appreciate it, and makes perfect sense.

[john doe]

Ok, after a short search with my pal Google, it seems there really aren´t much options out there. At least nothing I could use within Reaper.

Isn´t there a big FR for that yet, which I can vote for?

I know Ableton has a very well working feature like that on board, Logic and FL Studio, too, I believe. Isn´t there no demand for that here in the Reaper community or is it just considered a low priority.

Maybe I put out a FR on vote for that.....

Thanks and greets

[musicbynumbers]

This does it http://www.voxengo.com/product/latencydelay/

I use this too for "faking" a reported PDC for late orchestral samples etc.

Obviously won't work on an armed track but fine for adjusting everything at once without having to move the notes of the grid lines.

I actually find though that using the "apply track effects to item" and moving it back visually in audio is better once your happy with the part.

[Argle]

Originally Posted by john doe

Ok, after a short search with my pal Google, it seems there really aren´t much options out there. At least nothing I could use within Reaper.

Isn´t there a big FR for that yet, which I can vote for?

I know Ableton has a very well working feature like that on board, Logic and FL Studio, too, I believe. Isn´t there no demand for that here in the Reaper community or is it just considered a low priority.

Maybe I put out a FR on vote for that.....

Thanks and greets

Sonar has it as well. Not sure what the demand would be, but I would definitely appreciate built in predelay for tracks.

[john doe]

Sorry, musicbynumbers, this Voxengo plugin doesn´t work in my case, since I can´t set a negative delay. Thanks for the tip, anyway.
Maybe I´m not using it right?

Well, If even Sonar has this, then I guess, I will be putting in an FR for that matter soon.

Since I already begun to integrate more and more hardware into my musical workflow (to get away from keyboard and mouse), this issue is getting more and more important to me.
I mean, moving envelope points around to compensate for delay may be fine, IF there is one or two envelopes to cover. If there are more (and in my case there will be more), then jamming, arranging,...will become more and more a big pain in the neck.

Thanks and greets

[john doe]

Hi, I put in an official FR for that today. I hope, many people will vote for that.

EDIT:
I noticed another one just like mine, which came up earlier and already has a lot of votes. So, to avoid confusion, I will be posting a link to the earlier FR here instead of mine.

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=492

Thanks and greets

[EvilDragon]

As you can see, official FR already existed. It's even elevated, because a lot of people voted.

[IXix]

Does this work? I just added pdc_midi to JS-Delay/time_adjustment. I think it should work but I'm a bit vague about the whole PDC thing. My brain seems to have a little blind spot there.

desc:time adjustment

slider1:0<-1000,1000,1>delay amount (ms)
slider2:0<-120,12,1>wet mix (dB)
slider3:-120<-120,12,1>dry mix (dB)
slider4:0<-40000,40000,1>additional delay amount (samples)

@init
bpos=0;

@slider
pdc_midi=delaylen != 0;
wet=2^(slider2/6);
dry=2^(slider3/6);
delaylen = (slider1*srate*0.001 + slider4)|0;
delaylen<0?(
  pdc_delay=-delaylen;  
  pdc_top_ch=2;
  pdc_bot_ch=0;
  delaylen=0;
):(
delaylen+=pdc_delay;
);
bufsize=srate*4.0; // extra in case the user wants to go over

@sample
bpos[0]=spl0;
bpos[1]=spl1;

rdpos=bpos-delaylen*2;
rdpos<0 ? rdpos+=bufsize*2;
spl0=spl0*dry+rdpos[0]*wet;
spl1=spl1*dry+rdpos[1]*wet;

bpos+=2;
bpos>=bufsize*2 ? bpos=0;

[john doe]

Sorry, ED, didn´t notice. Won´t happen again.

And many thanks for the effort, IXix, but this doesn´t work in my case. I just tried it. Unfortunatly I´m not able to develop your aproach further, because I have no idea of JS. It looked very promising.

Thanks and greets

[IXix]

Originally Posted by john doe

And many thanks for the effort, IXix, but this doesn´t work in my case. I just tried it.

No worries. I'm not certain but I think it's probably supposed to work. It might even be a bug that it doesn't but again, I'm not certain.

[musicbynumbers]

Unless I'm mistaken this plugin can only do negative delay

Don't be fooled by the positive numbers. put the desired amount in there and on playback the midi will be moved to the left in time.

If you want positive delay, voxengo does a free delay that does the same but positive

Originally Posted by john doe

Sorry, musicbynumbers, this Voxengo plugin doesn´t work in my case, since I can´t set a negative delay. Thanks for the tip, anyway.
Maybe I´m not using it right?

Well, If even Sonar has this, then I guess, I will be putting in an FR for that matter soon.

Since I already begun to integrate more and more hardware into my musical workflow (to get away from keyboard and mouse), this issue is getting more and more important to me.
I mean, moving envelope points around to compensate for delay may be fine, IF there is one or two envelopes to cover. If there are more (and in my case there will be more), then jamming, arranging,...will become more and more a big pain in the neck.

Thanks and greets

[musicbynumbers]

Originally Posted by john doe

Hi, I put in an official FR for that today. I hope, many people will vote for that.

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=4886

Thanks and greets

voted! but in the meantime, Try that latency plugin.

[serr]

If you are mixing something in post with already recorded parts, you can use any number of techniques to effectively move a track sooner in time. Anything from plugins with "negative delay" or "look ahead" features to manually grabbing the item and nudging it back some amount.

For real time mixing/performing, you are limited by the capabilities of your hardware. You can only keep everything lined up to the slowest player.

[beatbybit]

could we please have a small +/- button for this on every track?
and if i could righclick on the buttons and set the "nudge" value in whole samples it would be awesome.

the JS plugin doesnt round to whole samples, and for eg 20.7 doesnt look that good, imo.. (makes no sense to me)

[john doe]

Sorry again, musicbynumbers, it´s not working in my case. I made several attempts (via envelope, via midi clip with only a cc event at the beginning). In Ableton I had to set a negative delay of -70ms to make my SEQ4 change patterns in time. This timeframe could be covered with the Voxengo Plugin...

could we please have a small +/- button for this on every track?

I too think, a dedicated button for this on a track would be perfect...

[musicbynumbers]

Sorry to hear that john! Will have a look at it again myself next time I'm in reaper to see if there's a setting that could be potentially not set and is causing reaper not to compensate for the pseudo latency the plugin creates as it normally works by tricking reaper into thinking that the whole track needs "PDC" (plugin delay compensation) when it doesn't, therefore pulling the whole track back in time.

Did you try it on a track and not a item? It's meant to go anywhere on the track effects.

EDIT: Ah, if I remember correctly, what you have to do with it is a little tricky at first since it adds 10,000 samples of latency that reaper has to compensate for but I just tried it with two identical audio items on two separate tracks (one track with voxengo latency and one with no fx) and pulled the audio item on the track with no fx to the left by 5 samples. I then added 5 samples of delay to the track with voxengo latency and this pulled the audio item on that track back in time with the early audio item. Hope that makes sense! Getting late here!

Only other thing it could be of the top of my head is that you have allow feedback routing turned on in project settings which will disallow PDC in certain situations.

Good luck solving it!

Originally Posted by john doe

Sorry again, musicbynumbers, it´s not working in my case. I made several attempts (via envelope, via midi clip with only a cc event at the beginning). In Ableton I had to set a negative delay of -70ms to make my SEQ4 change patterns in time. This timeframe could be covered with the Voxengo Plugin...




I too think, a dedicated button for this on a track would be perfect...

[john doe]

Hi, I did some further testing on this matter.

I set up 2 tracks with identical midi items containing just one note and identical vsti. On one track I put the Voxengo latency plugin with high delay (90ms).

First I can confirm, the plugin works. There is an audible predelay on the track with the plugin.

BUT:

I monitored the midi output of both tracks with midiox and even with the plugin active, both note events have an identical timestamp. Since there is an audible difference, I expected different timestamps.

The predelay the plugin creates seems only to be processed internally, but does not get forwarded to the midi hardware output.

Does this already count as a bug ?

Anyway, I tried sending the midi output of the track to another track and then send it out, but the result was the same. I also inserted another JS plugin that manipulates the midi data and that was reflected on the midiox monitor.

SO:

The created predelay of the Voxengo plugin works internally with midi. But if the midi data is sent over the midi hardware output, the predelay somehow vanishes.
Other manipulations of the midi stream (like transpose,...) still gets through.

I´m still working on a solution .

Thanks and greets

[john doe]

Hi, I found a solution for my problem (yeh!).

A friend of mine just got Flowstone (former Synthmaker). So I asked him if he could try and create something that could provide a predelay that works with midi. He couldn´t do it himself though, by the time I asked he was still evaluating Flowstone and wanted to try a bunch of other stuff too, but he posted a topic on the DSP Robotics forum.
And he got an answer :-) A very nice guy there helped him out with an example script and the corresponding VST. This Effect can be inserted on a track and it does exactly what I need, it generates negative delay from 1-1000 ms! And it works solely with midi, audio just gets passed through.

The forum thread can be found here:

http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/v...php?f=2&t=1725

Inside that thread you can download the script and the VST.
Much thanks to the creator, a very nice guy named trogluddite.

With that effect my SEQ4 can be controlled in perfect sync without having to shift events on the timeline. I hope this can be of some help to others.
Thanks again for all the help.

greets

[Soli Deo Gloria]

Allow me to bump this...

I think I have tried every midi/audio delay plugin out there, and specifically, all of those that are said to have negative delay abilities (JS time adjust, midi time adjust and midi delay v0.1, Voxengo´s Latency Delay, E. Sleepers´ Latency Fixer, the FlowStone Pre Delay quoted above, etc.). None of them get the job done here, and I have tried disabling PDC on each of them, changing track´s performance options and everything you could think of, but nothing, no negative midi delay is available.

Is there any chance of negative delay with a plugin in Reaper? (be it native or third party, midi, preferably, or at least audio). If anyone got it working, would you mind sharing the tip?

Thanks in advance...

[timbralzoom]

how about this one
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=129433

[Soli Deo Gloria]

Thanks for the reply! That was the first I tried, but it doesn´t work here - just like all the other ones I´ve tested

[serr]

Originally Posted by Soli Deo Gloria

Thanks for the reply! That was the first I tried, but it doesn´t work here - just like all the other ones I´ve tested

If you have latency with your input source in a live sound situation, there is no plugin that can LITERALLY turn back time.

The time adjuster plugins are made to work with already recorded material.

If you are performing live, you need to get that connection working at the hardware level. Playing a MIDI instrument is performing live.

- The hardware interface with the MIDI port. Does it support low enough latency? If the answer is no, you need different hardware.
- The lowest block size you can get away with in Reaper with stable operation (with the connected interface and plugin choices in question). Is the total system still within 11ms? If the answer is no, you need to use a different plugin that works at lower latency.

You can't break physics! But there are a lot of options where you don't have to.

[reapero]

Is this already in Reaper? Very handy feature in other DAWs when wroking with orchestral sample libraries

[timbralzoom]

in the Track "Routing" window

[reapero]

YAY! thx!!