Considering FM3 for Home Recording - USB Latency Issues?

[radloFx]

Hello everyone.

I'm considering purchasing an FM3, mainly for my home recording setup. I read the official reply in January this year regarding USB latency issues.
I really want to have a simple and uncomplicated home recording setup. The USB latency problem would be a no-go for me. Can anyone confirm whether this problem has been fixed with firmware 8 or 9? Any experiences or updates would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jumpback]

Thats all I do with mine, and absolutely love how it records, so cool adding tracks with whatever preset your on and fits the bill well, my recordings sound huge, but I'm into Modern High gain muse and have zero latency in Logic with a 128 buffer and run plenty of VST Drums and synths etc..
You will dig it I'm sure of it.

 

[GlennO]

Hello everyone.

I'm considering purchasing an FM3, mainly for my home recording setup. I read the official reply in January this year regarding USB latency issues.
I really want to have a simple and uncomplicated home recording setup. The USB latency problem would be a no-go for me. Can anyone confirm whether this problem has been fixed with firmware 8 or 9? Any experiences or updates would be greatly appreciated.

The FM3 still has a latency compensation problem, and that will probably never change. But there is a workaround that works pretty well, so I wouldn't let that deter you from using an FM3 for recording. To get your recordings to align properly, just follow the instructions here:

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/latency-compensation-measurement.177851/

 

[Jumpback]

I had one in 2019 and that did not have any latency issues either, but the one I bought after that 2021 I believe had an issue, but I just set the global Buffer in the unit and that fixed it, the one I have now came all good to go, but if you have a prob you can tweak settings no prob, hit any of us up and you'll be square

 

[Tony777]

what I do when I record in Logic is check the latency for the preset I'm
using this way :
I set the metronome on, put a headphone on my guitar pickup, and record the bips
through it, the recording then shows the misalignement vs the timeline in ms.
Then I know by how much I have to realign my tracks, for me, even at buffer 32
in logic it's often 8 or 9 ms regarding the preset, D.I's are 5 ms.
I'm no specialist but that seems logical,and frankly even with a 9 ms latency, I don't hear much of a problem
at all listening back, and I've got a great sense of rythm...

 

[TwinbornAxis]

The FM3 does not have the bug that was fixed on Axe-Fx III and FM9, where the latency could vary from one boot to another. Like any audio interface, it will add some latency to a recording system. Here are two things you can do.

1. Lower the USB BUFFER SIZE on the FM3 to its minimum setting.
2. Apply global latency compensation in your DAW.

Also I record several times a week with logic and have no issues with latency that have made me need another audio interface.

 

[xCiaránx]

It's probably not a major issue if you plan on using the FM3 as your sole audio interface, since you can pretty much just set and forget the offset.

BUT it's a huge annoyance if you regularly switch between different interfaces and you use a DAW that only lets you set the recording offset globally and not per-device (Many? Most? Ableton Live is one). You'll have to keep a note of or remember the exact offset and manually change back and forth from that to zero each time you change your device to something else. And then remember to input the offset again when you go back to the FM3.

It's annoying enough to have to do that extra step each time. But you'll inevitably forget to change the offset sometimes and end up with out of sync recordings that need to be aligned, which adds to the frustration.

 

[Jumpback]

what I do when I record in Logic is check the latency for the preset I'm
using this way :
I set the metronome on, put a headphone on my guitar pickup, and record the bips
through it, the recording then shows the misalignement vs the timeline in ms.
Then I know by how much I have to realign my tracks, for me, even at buffer 32
in logic it's often 8 or 9 ms regarding the preset, D.I's are 5 ms.
I'm no specialist but that seems logical,and frankly even with a 9 ms latency, I don't hear much of a problem
at all listening back, and I've got a great sense of rythm...

Yeah wow thats Interesting to know, It doesn't hinder my tracking whatsoever, but I'm just a bedroom Producer haha

 

[starcat]

fm3 rocks for recording. takes some setup but sounds killer.

 

[radloFx]

what I do when I record in Logic is check the latency for the preset I'm
using this way :
I set the metronome on, put a headphone on my guitar pickup, and record the bips
through it, the recording then shows the misalignement vs the timeline in ms.
Then I know by how much I have to realign my tracks, for me, even at buffer 32
in logic it's often 8 or 9 ms regarding the preset, D.I's are 5 ms.
I'm no specialist but that seems logical,and frankly even with a 9 ms latency, I don't hear much of a problem
at all listening back, and I've got a great sense of rythm...

Thank you very much for your reply. That sounds very interesting. However, as someone who is not experienced and not particularly interested in delving into these technical details, it seems like too much overhead for me.

When I buy a high-priced device, I just want it to work seamlessly. I can live with relying on workarounds for features I rarely use or which are not important to me. However, in my opinion, a main feature should work without any need for a workaround.

 

[Jumpback]

Thank you very much for your reply. That sounds very interesting. However, as someone who is not experienced and not particularly interested in delving into these technical details, it seems like too much overhead for me.

When I buy a high-priced device, I just want it to work seamlessly. I can live with relying on workarounds for features I rarely use or which are not important to me. However, in my opinion, a main feature should work without any need for a workaround.

I'm telling you its a non issue, tracking with my FM3 is Seamless, I would trash it if I had latency with tracking, try it and send back if its too much, I did nothing to mine when I got it and dont notice any latency in Logic, even with a 512 buffer its still completely doable.

 

[jeffgoobs]

Is the issue mainly that you don't want to have to go back and fix the offset afterword, or is it the latency while you're actually recording potentially affecting your playing which concerns you? The reason I ask is because no matter what, in a native-based system (which the Axe-Fx line is) you will inevitably have some latency simply because the audio signal takes time to go into the unit, get converted, get processed, and then get converted again back to analog and sent to speakers/headphones so you can hear it. There are different ways to deal with this. If you have an audio interface which has direct monitoring available, then you can record without any perceptible latency, but you'll still need to compensate the track in the project so it jives with the other tracks.

 

[GlennO]

Is the issue mainly that you don't want to have to go back and fix the offset afterword, or is it the latency while you're actually recording potentially affecting your playing which concerns you? The reason I ask is because no matter what, in a native-based system (which the Axe-Fx line is) you will inevitably have some latency simply because the audio signal takes time to go into the unit, get converted, get processed, and then get converted again back to analog and sent to speakers/headphones so you can hear it. There are different ways to deal with this. If you have an audio interface which has direct monitoring available, then you can record without any perceptible latency, but you'll still need to compensate the track in the project so it jives with the other tracks.

No, the issue is not latency. The issue is compensation for that latency. All audio interfaces have latency, but all DAWs automatically apply a compensation to correct for that so the recorded audio correctly aligns with other tracks. With the FM3 however, the compensation is incorrect and the recorded audio will lag by about 7ms. This will be true even if you direct monitor so you don't hear any lag when playing. Because this lag is roughly constant, you can adjust the recording delay preference in your DAW to manually compensate for it.

 

[radloFx]

No, the issue is not latency. The issue is compensation for that latency. All audio interfaces have latency, but the compensation automatically applied in the DAW will correct for that so the recorded audio correctly aligns with other tracks. With the FM3 however, the compensation is incorrect and the recorded audio will lag by about 7ms. Because this lag is roughly constant, you can adjust the recording delay preference in your DAW to manually compensate for it.

Thanks for your reply - I've read this a few times now. That's exactly the problem for my particular use case. When recording is a major application, it's a hard pill to swallow to make the adjustment manually (for something that is most likely, but not certainly, constant). I've often rationalized or downplayed problems after having already owned something I'd like to avoid that mistake this time if possible.

 

[davidclayw]

I had really terrible latency when trying to record to Logic through the USB out on my FM3. Luckily in my case all I had to do was reduce the USB buffer size found in the Digital I/O Configuration section in the Audio page of the I/O menu to 48 and now there is essentially no discernible latency. It does increase cpu usage a bit so just keep that in mind. If I were you I would try that first because its super easy and if that doesn’t work then try some of the more complicated solutions. Sorry is someone else already posted this as an answer lol.

 

[DoctorJones]

Ultimately I'm able to work around the latency compensation bug without issue. I know I'm not entitled to an answer, but I really am curious. If the other models had the same bug and were patched, why is it not possible to correct it on the FM3?

 

[radloFx]

I had really terrible latency when trying to record to Logic through the USB out on my FM3. Luckily in my case all I had to do was reduce the USB buffer size found in the Digital I/O Configuration section in the Audio page of the I/O menu to 48 and now there is essentially no discernible latency. It does increase cpu usage a bit so just keep that in mind. If I were you I would try that first because its super easy and if that doesn’t work then try some of the more complicated solutions. Sorry is someone else already posted this as an answer lol.

But even if there is “almost no latency,” as long as it doesn't automatically compensate as it should, it annoys me. I'm not a professional, and maybe I don't hear the slight delay in the recording. Fractal could address it (as they did for the FM9), but they don't. That's reason enough for me not to buy it.

 

[GlennO]

One other point: The 7ms of lag I mentioned above assumes you have your usb buffer size setting in the FM3 set to the minimum value. If you have that set to a higher value, the lag in your recorded audio will be much larger. FAS recently changed the factory default for that buffer size to be 48, but there are probably many FM3 owners out there who have that set to a larger value.

Even under the best of circumstances though, 7ms of misalignment is a lot and I think most people would consider that enough to make their guitar recordings sound out of time with their drums.

The workaround detailed in the link posted above works for most people, but there are situations like the one mentioned above where you might be swapping audio interfaces, and that workaround might be inadequate.

IMHO the bigger problem is how all of this must be discovered by the average FM3 owner. This isn't a problem anyone would expect to have with a good audio interface, so it's asking a lot to expect someone to investigate the problem and find an obscure post in the FAS forum that provides the workaround instructions. It might help if that information was more readily available, perhaps even including it in the user manual.

 

[GlennO]

I know I'm not entitled to an answer, but I really am curious. If the other models had the same bug and were patched, why is it not possible to correct it on the FM3?

It's complicated . The short answer is: the problem on the FM9/Axe-FX was different than the problem on the FM3, so the solution is not applicable to the FM3. It's possible there might be progress on this issue on the FM3 in the future, but that seems unlikely at this point.

 

[duzie]

One other point: The 7ms of lag I mentioned above assumes you have your usb buffer size setting in the FM3 set to the minimum value. If you have that set to a higher value, the lag in your recorded audio will be much larger. FAS recently changed the factory default for that buffer size to be 48, but there are probably many FM3 owners out there who have that set to a larger value.

Even under the best of circumstances though, 7ms of misalignment is a lot and I think most people would consider that enough to make their guitar recordings sound out of time with their drums.

The workaround detailed in the link posted above works for most people, but there are situations like the one mentioned above where you might be swapping audio interfaces, and that workaround might be inadequate.

IMHO the bigger problem is how all of this must be discovered by the average FM3 owner. This isn't a problem anyone would expect to have with a good audio interface, so it's asking a lot to expect someone to investigate the problem and find an obscure post in the FAS forum that provides the workaround instructions. It might help if that information was more readily available, perhaps even including it in the user manual.

Totally agree with this !