Lantency in ableton; need to offset clips!
I know this isn't really max or jitter or anything related but I am quite desperate and it seems that this forum has a knowledgeable community. Perhaps someone can steer me in the right direction.
So, I am using midi clips to trigger effects such that they are quantized. I am doing this two ways. One is by using x-clips from the midi remote script called "clyphx" to trigger the effects device on/off. The other way is simply sending CC automation data out of the clip envelops "on and off" for the effects.
The problem I am having is that both of these methods result in serious latency. The time after the clip has fired for the midi to turn on/off the effect. For the x-clips (clyphx) there is about 100ms of latency and for regular midi cc clips there is about 15ms. Both amounts create undesired effects because the downbeat is obscured by those few milliseconds of still effected signal before the midi tells it to shut off.
It seems that there is not obvious way to remedy this and I feel like it should be a more common problem for ableton users interested in live performance techniques. The only way to can see the fix this would be to have the "effect triggering midi clips" firing slightly before (about 100ms) the "effected" clips. This way the effect would turn on/off right in sync with the downbeats of the effected clip.
Does this make sense to anyone? Does anyone know a way of offsetting the firing or playtime of clips in relativity to other clips. The "track delay" in ableton does not work because this seems to only effect the delay of the playback and not the actual firing up the clips which is what is causing the problem. Perhaps this is a m4l plugin that could be written for this?
Yes, I think a m4l device could handle this. Assuming that the "effected" clips are quantized to 1 bar and the "effecting" clip is not quantized at all, the m4l device would receive the trigger signal for the effecting clip and fire the clip slightly before the next bar, for example by setting a [timepoint] with adjustable offset.
That sounds exactly what I need. I don't have m4l now but plan on getting it once i can afford it.
IS there a plugin that would do this out now? IF not, do you know anyone willing to program a plugin that would launch selected clips say 150 ms before the beat or something along those lines?
How would a programming lay man go about figuring taht out?
I'm not aware of an existing m4l device for this. Programming it would require good knowledge of max/m4l.