Gday all. Just finally getting my head around this MIDI thing ( Old school I’m afraid ) and thought I had it when I was playing my keyboard through the HAL and it was recording with massive latency! Nearly a second! I tried through the Groove Agent and that would only record every other drum stroke on a 4 bar loop! Is it possible that because my keyboard is old that it would have more latency? It dosent come up with the model of my keyboard in the list of devices and is not a usb device, just MIDI cables. It is about16 years old. Any help for this noob would be greatful…I’m nearly there 
Latency is caused by your Audio engine. Your keyboard/Midi interface have little to no bearing on the amount of latency.
You adjust basic latency of the system by reducing the audio interface buffer settings.
Additional latency may be added by some plug ins…if they are inserted in series on channels, groups and master they can quickly add up to unworkable amounts. The plugin delay compensation button can temporarily disable plugs with latency to help with this.
Without knowing a lot more about your setup/projects it’s hard to give any more definitive advice.
Thanks Grim. After I posted I thought that there is too many variables here for people to help out effectively and was about to delete the post. What I have at the moment is my external keyboard plugged into my focusrite interface and what I would like to do, ( keep in mind I haven’t done this before…) is add an instrument track, pull up, say, Hal or groove agent and then record something through that with my external keyboard,…after stuffing around a bit today I have now found out that I have lost sound on a previously recorded acoustic drum track that I converted to MIDI, getting a signal but no sound…this is seriously killing my creativity!
As Grim says, it’s very unlikely to be your old MIDI keyboard that’s to blame. I use several old MIDI keyboards that have worked (mainly) fine through various iterations of Cubase up to 8.5. I assume simply re-starting everything doesn’t solve the issue? I ask as I have occasionally had this problem but a re-boot of everything has cured it.
The other issue I once saw was from a very old Roland D110 MIDI sound module that occasionally sent out a splurge of MID garbage which slowed the whole system down but I think that’s less likely with a controller keyboard.
Some more system specs might help…and what is your MIDI interface?
Sure, thanks planarchist. I am using a hp elitebook lappy, i7 2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 64bit operating, free of bloatware and just used for Cubase. My interface is the new gen Focusrite 18i20 with updated drive. I’m using the MIDI IO athe back of the interface as it is obviously not a usb MIDI. To be honest it is probably the way I have the settings configured somewhere that is causing the trouble, as I said I have now lost sound from a track that was converted to a MIDI drum from an acoustic live drum, my lack of knowledge in this subject is my let down…
Cheers
Make sure the focusrite ASIO driver is selected as the driver in Cubase.
Try to adjust the Focusrite buffers to a lower number (Try 128 which should work on most computers and with the 2nd gen give a reasonable latency)
Your other issue could be any number of things…is the midi track assigned to an instrument, is it on the right channel…can you hear any audio at all coming out of Cubase???
Thanks Grim,
The MIDI track of which I can’t hear anything anymore was originally a live kick drum that I recorded but changed it to a MIDI kick which sounded better. I was always able to hear it fine and was going to do some more editing on it in a day or two. But after I stuffed around with the keyboard and HAL and things today, I must have changed a setting so now I cant hear that track. The mixer shows a signal and so does the little blue band to the right of the track but no actual sound coming out of the computer or phones. Hope that helps
No sound coming out of Cubase but the levels are moving.
Not sure I know what you mean by " right channel ".
The MIDI track in question was a live drum track but I got the hitpoints and made a MIDI track out of it and deleted the original drum track.
Your answers aren’t too clear. I know that you have no audio for this track…but can you get any sound from Cubase at the moment…ANY sound at all.
Sorry mate, didnt realize you meant the other tracks…Yes audio coming out of the rest of Cubase,evrything else is all good. What should the output on the inspector for this sort of track say?
Ok…so it sounds like the midi is not assigned to an instrument…do you have the drum instrument you want to use loaded up in Cubase already?
If yes then just select that instrument as output in the inspector.
If not add it as a track instrument (or rack instrument) and it’s input will become available to your midi track.
Yep, had a look at that. In the inspector I have the following choices
Not Connected
01.Grove Agent SE -main
01.Groove Agent SE-Pattern
02.Groove Agent SE-Pattern
02.Groove Agent SE-Main
03.Groove Agent SE-Main
03.Groove Agent SE-Pattern
Microsoft GS Waveable Synth
Snare Ins1.CurveEQ-MIDI In
This is exactly what is written?
I just did a test and opened a new project did a quick record and that come out fine!
I don’t know why I have all these options on this track
You have those options because you have three Groove agents loaded in that project.
None of which are giving me a sound. I think I will just delete the whole damn thing, I’m over it!
Cheers for your help though.
No problem…So what happened with the latency problem…any better?
Oh yeah, I’m at work at the moment so not in the studio. I’ll wait till I get home have 1 or 4 glasses of red and go from there. If I get stuck I’m sure I’ll blabber on about it here.
Thanks for the help mate!