Logic/Mackie 400F latency problem

[Tibbon]

I'm shooting myself in the foot. I haven't had enough time (between "day jobs" and all) to mess around and critically listen to what I have here. I'm finding that, using Logic anyways, my Mackie 400F is inducing a HUGE delay into the recording chain.

I'm using the newest version of Logic Pro on an G4 1.25 MDD 2.0gb memory. I have a Mackie 400F hooked up to the internal G4 firewire 400 port. I do have an extra firewire card in the system that I could (but haven't) tried, as I had it for my Digi002R (when I still had it and it wasn't playing well with the internal bus).

Logic/Mackie is inducing nearly 5400 samples of delay into anything I record. This is making everything I record turn out to be trash for timing (and I thought it was just my head screwing with me. Noticed badly when I got my drumset and was trying to record to Ultrabeat tracks). I can only compensate in Logic by 5000 samples as you can see here.

I'm recording at 44.1/24 bit, 256 sample buffer, using the Mackie as a clock. Plain and simple. I was just recording the Logic metronome using a mic near the speakers. Any ideas? Some days I want to trash this all and pick up a 2". Different problems, but problems that make sense at least.

I've attached a few images of my problems so hopefully someone can help me. I also have updated my firmware on the mackie to the newest.

[Tibbon]

Anyone? I'll also post this to Apple's Logic forums and Mackie's forums, but I normally trust GS to help fix my problems fix.

[theblue1]

Many -- maybe most -- rigs have some amount of track misalignment when overdubbing to already existing tracks (unless it's otherwise compensated for by something like Mackie Tracktion's "track alignment" compensation calibration utility or Cubase's (apparently similar) hardware comp (and I understand Sonar 6 has some form of track alignment compensation).


I've considered this one of the "dirty little secrets" in the computer recording field -- DAW publishers like to blame the hardware drivers for supplying inaccurate driver offset/compensation information -- if they even deal with it at all.

But the fact is that most of the people I've got to do "loopback tests" of their systems have found SOME amount of misalignment. If it's a ms or two, I can understand why some folks feel it's ignorable.

But when I started using my MOTU 828mkII, I started noticing some timing issues and I broke down and did a loopback test. I found my new tracks were 356 samples "behind" existing tracks. About 8 ms at 44.1 kHz. (This is a consistent amount, no matter what the software monitoring buffers are set at. I'm afraid I'd have to do a test to tell you if hardware buffer changes would effect it -- I suspect they would, in my case, since my 356 sample delay works out to 128 samples in and out (for 256) and then around a 100 sample "delay" which would roughly correspond to the amount of time probably necessary for A/D and D/A conversions.)



But that's NOTHING compared to your long delay.

Your hardware buffers seem set at a conservative but not unreasonable 256 samples... I'm a bit stumped, I'm afraid...

[Tibbon]

Thanks. Yea, i'm aware that all things have a slight delay in them, and i'd even at this point be fine if everything was off by 128 samples on every pass! But this is freaking nuts. I'm gonna try the other firewire bus and see if that helps.

[Tibbon]

I switched the firewire cable to a PCI firewire card that I hard installed and it fixed it.

What's odd is that Digidesign found out in their testing of the Digi002/R that the internal firewire on the MDD G4's didn't work well at all with the Digi002. I'm betting that it's the same problem with the mackies, but mackie doesn't test their shit much in all likelyhood compared to digi.

Mackie's site had NO help, whereas digi's was able to help me (when I had a digi002, and thus that's why I had the other card installed). +1 Digi, -1 Mackie.

[lydog]

I'm on my second 400F and having latency issues as well as constant distortion. Using an intel Imac and Logic.

Sorry Mackie, your shit ain't cutting it. I'm returning this badboy and looking for another options. Love the Apogee Ensemble, but damn it's pricey (for what essentially is a "demo" studio of mine), and haven't been on gearslutz lately, so I'm unsure if they've solved all the issues they were having with the 'beta' release of the unit.

UGH!!! Sometimes I wonder why I bothered switching from my 002R...

[Tibbon]

Originally Posted by lydog

I'm on my second 400F and having latency issues as well as constant distortion. Using an intel Imac and Logic.

Sorry Mackie, your shit ain't cutting it. I'm returning this badboy and looking for another options. Love the Apogee Ensemble, but damn it's pricey (for what essentially is a "demo" studio of mine), and haven't been on gearslutz lately, so I'm unsure if they've solved all the issues they were having with the 'beta' release of the unit.

UGH!!! Sometimes I wonder why I bothered switching from my 002R...

I'll agree on the 002R sentiment. It wasn't perfect, but moreso i often wonder why i got rid of my 001 (oh yea, I wanted to upgrade my os... silly digidesign). Mackie has really lost me. I can't see myself getting another Mackie product again.

The switching to another firewire bus (PCI firewire card) helped, but it still occasionally does really weird latency things for NO reason that fix themselves upon a reset of the software or hardware. And there's still the distortion on occasion (about 5% of the time). It's simply unacceptable for a "Professional" product as mackie tries to market it. i know it's not a professional product, but it still pisses me off.