Is there some advice for the cubasis 3 recording offset compensation?

111378 · October 21, 2021, 8:57pm

Maybe there is some description for it, but i did not find it ( that said the Cubase manual for latency compensation is not much longer, but this is off topic here )

Cubasis 3 does display the device latency plus some values in a drop down list.

It is not clear if the “plus” means, that the real latency is the sum of both values.
And if so only for input or input + output.

Then there is the “Audio Recording Offset Compensation”.
No drop down list, but a slider , it takes some patience to set low values with this slider control.

Question: Shouldn’t the values of the offset compensation aligned to the latencies ( “plus” or not ) ?

What i found by trial and error, that the device latency displayed seems a good value for the offset compensation, when recording audio with the metronome.

When monitoring an audio track, the latency is different, i did not found what a good value is for this use-case, which isn’t so uncommen i guess e.g. when some AU effects are used for recording especially.
Sure i’ve read ( in the Cubase manual ) that you should prefer direct monitoring and then no offset compensation should be necessary, but this seems not to work with cubasis and its metronome which seems to include some latency.

All i wrote is for iPad and an iRig HD interface ( has no audio out, therefore also no direct monitoring possibility ).

Maybe i misunderstand the offset compensation completely and only my timing is bad, but because there is a clear difference in the recording result when recording to the cubasis metronome and track monitoring as i describe above i think the offset compensation matters.

Therefore it would be helpful to have some advice, how the latency settings and the offset compensation is intended to be used for different use cases.

( “Calibrate” seems to work with the internal iPad microphone, results are more or less stable, but connecting the iPad Audio output to the iRig HD input or with a microphone connected to the iRig HD resulted only in varying results, often 0ms, which is obviously wrong, so its not working for that use case ).

111378 · October 23, 2021, 12:22pm

in hindsight simple. I think i finally got it, regarding the record offset setting.

for „calibrate“ to work, make sure the input level is sufficient otherwise
erratic and wrong values will be the result.
The displayed latency values may be a start but are not necessarily correct values for the offset

values for my iPad and interface:

to eliminate „the human factor“ ( means my own unconscious offset or or errors, i don’t know how accurate e.g. professional drummers are and i‘m not one ). I simply recorded the metronome on a audio track and checked if there is an offset
to verify this also, i recorded the playback of the metronome track ( from point 3) ) also to a new audio track.

For the shown values in the screenshot no offset was visible ( for lower values like e.g. the sum of the latencies there was one visible)
41ms is not small and more than twice the sum of the displayed latencies.
This matches more or less what calibrate tells for the internal iPad microphone, therefore seems consistent.

Is this now „correct“ ? Or expected? Well i hope so.