Random Internal MIDI timing All Over The Place in Cubase

Cubase
1

When I play MIDI keyboard the performance feels good then when I play it back it just doesn’t feel (or look) right.

I tested MIDI timing by drawing quarter notes on the grid on a MIDI track, I then used “LoopBe” virtual MIDI cable and recorded the output onto another MIDI track, and the notes are randomly early or late and totally inconsistent.

Here are the results, the numbers are in milliseconds, L = late after the beat & E = early before the beat: 7L, 2L, 3L, 6L, 1E, 2L, 7E, 3E, 3L, 4E, 1L, 3L, 8L, 1L, 6E, 7L.

I have used LatencyMon and such and ACPI.sys, ndis.sys and Wdf01000 sometimes seem to be problematic. I’m not sure if these are responsible for the ’ inconsistent randomness’? I’ve followed the general advice to update and such but the problem doesn’t go away. I’ve also followed the advice on the Focusrite website to prepare a (Windows) computer for music production but it just doesn’t change anything.

Is there an ‘ultimate list of tweaks for music production PCs’? I know there are many out there but often they contradict each other, I also read the comments on a Youtube video and people were saying they had to reinstall their computer because regular use of their computer stopped hah.

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Could be but I don’t think that they are related, if there are no hiccups when playing back audio. Usually, these show their ugly head when doing so.

So, two links to check, maybe, as I think that your issue is more related to MIDI timing/jitter ones. Even if the latter is more than 15 years old, there are still things useful in it :

https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206366824-MIDI-issues-on-Windows

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Thanks Cubic. I actually already had those 2 webpages open, I’ve been through them in the past but felt it wasn’t a real solution. I’ll get through them both to the letter this time.

From the Sound On Sound article I learnt that lowering the buffer size decreases this randomness which I have tested and is true. I’m not sure my computer will hold up to super fast speeds half way through a project though if another live performance is needed.

Thanks again for your input.

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