Ableton adds negative delay for any Max for Live Midi device

Albert Linden's icon

I experience some strange latency behavior with Ableton when adding any Max for Live Midi Effect:

If I play a Midi track and record this tracks output on another Midi track, the Midi note timing will be spot on.
If I now add any Max for Live Midi Effect device – let's take for example Ableton's empty Midi Effect initializer device – and then record the tracks Midi output, all the Midi nots will be a bit too early. So it's a negative delay, it seems Ableton over-compensates the latency added by Max for Live devices.

The amount of this negative delay is not affected by changing any of Ableton settings:
- It stays the same when I turn latency compensation on and off.
- It stays the same no matter of what I set in Ableton's latency settings for buffer size or driver compensation.
- It stays the same no matter what Midi effect I add, also if it does a lot of complicated internal calculations.

Now, if I open the device with Max and go to the patcher inspector, I could compensate for this negative delay under "Defined Latency" by defining a negative value. But I expect this would not work for everybody if I share the device, as the amount of the negative delay will be different on different machines, right?

Is there any other way this can be solved?

Valiumdupeuple's icon

I can't reproduce here.

broc's icon

Which version of Live/Max?
In my experience the latest versions don't have any M4L latency problems.