Flexitime MIDI with Yamaha P155 and Roland QuadCapture

Discussion of playback and midi issues go here.
beethoven88
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 11:12 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by beethoven88 » Thu May 28, 2015 12:04 am

Hi All,

I'm finally posting in desperation for help with a problem that I've been trying to resolve for over a year. First, let me say that I am a techie, but not a musician at all. I play tech support for my significant other who is a professional musician.

She wants to use her Yamaha P155 digital piano to compose her own music in Sibelius. She uses the metronome feature in Sibelius to keep the beat but what Sibelius records is a jumbled mess. She reports that each measure is off by 1/8 or 1/16. The first measure always has a 1/8 or 1/16 rest even though I hear her playing on the tick. Here is the current set up:

Yamaha P155
Roland Quad Capture (latest firmware & drivers)
Intel i3 with plenty of RAM and SSD
USB Speakers
Windows 7 Pro
Sibelius 7.5.1

The P155 MIDI Out goes to the Roland's MIDI In and the P155 Midi In goes to the Roland's MIDI Out. The Roland is connected via USB 2.0 to the PC (the Quad is only USB 2.0).

In the Playback Devices Setup, I have tried the following:

Same in All Combos: Audio Engine Options = QUAD-CAPTURE (ASIO); Outputs 1/2; Buffer 64; Rate 44.1khz; (latency 5.08ms)

1) Active Device Sibelius Player = No Metronome & notes off by 1/8
2) Active Device General MIDI = Metronome via USB speakers & notes off by 1/8
3) Active Device QUAD-CAPTURE = No Metronome & notes off by 1/8

On the combos where the metronome is not audible, she watches the recording bar in Sibelius to play on the beats.

At this point, I’m at wits’ end. I started with an inexpensive Creative USB-MIDI that had neither WASPI nor ASIO drivers. Then to the Roland UM-ONE with only WASPI and now the Roland Quad Capture with ASIO drivers. I also tried upgrading from Sibelius 6 to 7.5x.

What am I missing or doing wrong? From everything I've read latency of 5ms should be no issue. I’ve watched perfmon and the PC is barely above idle. What are the proper settings in Sibelius to record MIDI accurately? Thank you.


andyg
Posts: 1727
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:55 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.1.3 and 6.2
Operating System: Windows

Post by andyg » Thu May 28, 2015 9:47 am

Firstly, remember that this is not the official Sibelius forum. For that you need to Google 'Sibelius chat page' and find your way there, as this forum won't allow me to insert a link.

Secondly, Google 'Taming the Flexitime Beast' (there may be a hyphen in Flexti-time?) which is a blog and tutorial by Daniel Spreadbury, former No.1 tech guy at Sibelius. That, along with asking the question on the official site, may help.

FWIW, recording into Sib this was is a waste of time and effort, IMHO. I've been a pro musician and teacher for 45 years, and I hope :D I can play in time after all these years. However, even with latency down to just 2ms, Sibelius (and Cubase's score display for that matter) still insists on producing that 'jumbled mess' at times!

beethoven88
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 11:12 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by beethoven88 » Thu May 28, 2015 6:40 pm

Thanks for the feedback. I had tried Spreadbury's suggestions a long time ago -- to no avail unfortunately. However, I believe I have now fixed the issue and as I figured, it was rather "easy" but was just a matter of knowing where to focus. I had her use headphones plugged directly in to the Roland Quad Capture AND set the default sound output device in Win7 to the Quad Capture. Now she gets the beat clicks through the headphones and the 1/8 or 1/16 offset is gone. I presume the Roland has much lower *output* latency for the metronome.

andyg
Posts: 1727
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:55 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.1.3 and 6.2
Operating System: Windows

Post by andyg » Thu May 28, 2015 10:03 pm

That explains it. There is effectively zero latency on the Roland's metronome.

You're now doing things 'correctly'! :)

But you can still expect to get some 'garbage' on screen at times.

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