FM3 recording latency offset

b8ck8tt

b8ck8tt

New Member
Hey folks,

I'm a relatively new owner of FM3, and I'm absolutely loving it. However, as I've been getting rid of extra gear recently, I've decided to switch to FM3 as my main USB interface. And I was really surprised to see everything I started to record through it was way behind. And I mean waaaaaay behind. I've looked into it online (mostly on this forum) and found out it's an issue with driver communicating the incorrect amount of offset to the DAW, it's a known issue, and it hasn't been fixed to this day. Well, not a big deal, this is what the manual offset is for. But it turned out my DAW (Bitwig 4.0.1) doesn't have a value high enough to compensate for it. It stops at 2048 samples / 42,67 ms, which is not quite enough to compensate for FM3's humongous recording latency. I've reproduced the issue on both Mac and PC with the same amount of latency from FM3. Yes, I can use another device as a USB interface, but it's very annoying, as it's clearly a bug that wasn't addressed for the longest time.

Now, my two questions are:
  • Any ideas on how I can fix that without introducing more gear, so I can record hassle-free?
  • Any information on if it's planned to be fixed at any point?

Thank you!
 
If you haven't tried it already, turn down the usb buffer size setting on your FM3 and/or the audio buffer size in Bitwig. That may bring the delay down enough that Bitwig can compensate for it. You'll have to contact FAS to learn the status of a fix.
 
In your DAW, turn off input monitoring on your guitar channel. :) That's where the latency is coming from. Monitor your guitar on the FM3 itself.
 
Rex said:
In your DAW, turn off input monitoring on your guitar channel. :) That's where the latency is coming from. Monitor your guitar on the FM3 itself.
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This is something different. The problem isn't latency. The problem is the wrong latency value is being reported to the DAW, and it will cause problems regardless of how you monitor. This comes up a lot on the forum since everyone who records with an AxeFX or FM3 runs into this problem. The workaround is to set your DAW recording delay preference to compensate for the error, but in this case the OP has an error that is too large for his DAW to compensate.
 
GlennO said:
If you haven't tried it already, turn down the usb buffer size setting on your FM3 and/or the audio buffer size in Bitwig. That may bring the delay down enough that Bitwig can compensate for it. You'll have to contact FAS to learn the status of a fix.
Click to expand...
I believe that did work, it reduced the latency from 58 ms to 34 ms, which Bitwig is able to compensate for. I will have to run more tests to confirm, but regardless - I really appreciate your input!
 
Stock FM3 into Logic via usb with 128 buffer sounds absolutely perfect, why do folks have this issue, do they change the FM3 buffer or something?
 
Jumpback said:
Stock FM3 into Logic via usb with 128 buffer sounds absolutely perfect, why do folks have this issue, do they change the FM3 buffer or something?
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There are countless reports on the forum of people who need to set the recording delay in Logic to get the audio to align properly. If you're saying it aligns properly in Logic without setting the recording delay, AFAIK you're first person to ever report that :).
 
I can't understand why it is not fixed yet. USB recording is unusable for me, no other device i worked with had problems like that...
 
I want to clarify the reproduction steps for the issue, so it's crystal clear and scientifically objective :)
1. In my DAW I create a track with a single short sharp sound (I synthesize a hi-hat hit to be specific)
2. I'm playing this sound through USB into FM3
3. I'm looping the output of FM3 into the input of FM3 (you can do that either directly with a cable, or even plug in your earbuds and put one against your bass or guitar pickup if you want to involve your favorite instrument into the process)
4. I record the signal through USB back into my DAW
5. I measure the difference between the start of the original sound and the recorded one.

Originally I've chosen the "Auto" setting in my DAW, and it chose 256 samples for the buffer. With that setting I had 58 ms of difference.
After GlennO's advise I've switched it manually to 128 samples, and the difference went down to 34 ms.
 
GlennO said:
There are countless reports on the forum of people who need to set the recording delay in Logic to get the audio to align properly. If you're saying it aligns properly in Logic without setting the recording delay, AFAIK you're first person to ever report that :).
Click to expand...
Yeah thats weird then, bcuz this is my 2nd FM3 and had the same experience with that one as well hmmmm, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket ya?
 
Jumpback said:
Yeah thats weird then, bcuz this is my 2nd FM3 and had the same experience with that one as well hmmmm, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket ya?
Click to expand...
Maybe you're just not hearing it? How many samples do you measure for your misalignment?
 
b8ck8tt said:
I want to clarify the reproduction steps for the issue, so it's crystal clear and scientifically objective :)
1. In my DAW I create a track with a single short sharp sound (I synthesize a hi-hat hit to be specific)
2. I'm playing this sound through USB into FM3
3. I'm looping the output of FM3 into the input of FM3 (you can do that either directly with a cable, or even plug in your earbuds and put one against your bass or guitar pickup if you want to involve your favorite instrument into the process)
4. I record the signal through USB back into my DAW
5. I measure the difference between the start of the original sound and the recorded one.

Originally I've chosen the "Auto" setting in my DAW, and it chose 256 samples for the buffer. With that setting I had 58 ms of difference.
After GlennO's advise I've switched it manually to 128 samples, and the difference went down to 34 ms.
Click to expand...

As far as I know, the latency of 34 ms is the time to complete the following itinerary:

time 1 that DAW needs to send the Hi-Hat to the FM3 via USB
time 2 that FM3 needs to convert the digital signal from USB INPUT to an analog signal to send through the FM3 OUTPUT
time 3 that FM3 needs to convert the analog signal received in the FM3 INPUT to a digital signal to send through the USB OUTPUT
time 4 that FM3 needs to send the Hi-Hat to the DAW via USB
time 5 that DAW needs to record the incoming signal

As the 34 ms are distributed in these 5 previous steps, it's not possible to know how much time takes each step. Anyway, it would be a wrong conclusion to affirm that FM3 has a latency of 34 ms.

I would suggest you to use another process with a "cleaner" routing to get more accurate results.

Also I would recommend you (if you can) to do the same process using more than one DAW, as the behaviour and configuration of the DAW is a crucial part of the problem/solution.
You can get different values using different DAWs, so the differences can give you valuable information.

There are a lot of information in internet of how to compare and measure latency times with accuracy.

Hope it helps you!
 
jordikt said:
As far as I know, the latency of 34 ms is the time to complete the following itinerary:

time 1 that DAW needs to send the Hi-Hat to the FM3 via USB
time 2 that FM3 needs to convert the digital signal from USB INPUT to an analog signal to send through the FM3 OUTPUT
time 3 that FM3 needs to convert the analog signal received in the FM3 INPUT to a digital signal to send through the USB OUTPUT
time 4 that FM3 needs to send the Hi-Hat to the DAW via USB
time 5 that DAW needs to record the incoming signal

As the 34 ms are distributed in these 5 previous steps, it's not possible to know how much time takes each step. Anyway, it would be a wrong conclusion to affirm that FM3 has a latency of 34 ms.

I would suggest you to use another process with a "cleaner" routing to get more accurate results.

Also I would recommend you (if you can) to do the same process using more than one DAW, as the behaviour and configuration of the DAW is a crucial part of the problem/solution.
You can get different values using different DAWs, so the differences can give you valuable information.

There are a lot of information in internet of how to compare and measure latency times with accuracy.

Hope it helps you!
Click to expand...
Hey, thank you for your input!
It's not about measuring, really. Any DAW and any audio interface would have latency. However, my decision to purchase FM3 against some great software packages (which would be much cheaper and would be absolutely enough for my home studio needs) was built entirely on a fact that all the processing is done in FM3, and not in the DAW. Meaning, I could play the backing track in my DAW (and I don't care how much time it takes for the signal to travel via USB to FM3 and get converted), hear the sound in my headphones when it finally arrives and play along to it (and I don't care how much time it takes for a signal from my bass to get converted and travel via USB to the DAW, because it gets automatically compensated by the DAW after the recording is done). And the beauty of FM3, or any processor, really, is that you can monitor your instrument without any delays or latencies for you, while playing along with the DAW. So, I hope, that part is clear.
The issue is in the last part, in which the recording, after I've, let's imagine, perfectly played my bass to the click from the DAW, is not aligned automatically with the grid. And it's so much off, my DAW doesn't even have a range big enough to compensate manually for it, so I have to drag every audio clip and move it manually 58 ms earlier. And since nobody can play perfectly, the right way to measure amount of this offset is performing this trick with creating a loop, just like I've described above.
 
I see this problem in a variety of DAWs. Here's a demonstration of the problem in Reaper, but I also see it Logic, Cubase and ProTools. The first take in the second track is a loopback recording of the first track. It shows the playback of the recorded audio is out of sync with the previously recorded track. That shouldn't happen. If the audio interface is reporting its latency properly, the DAW should align the audio so they are in sync. The second take was recorded after I adjusted the offset preference in Reaper to compensate for the error, so you can see that's an effective workaround to fix the problem.

The problem here is not latency. All interfaces have latency. The problem is an error when correcting for latency.

It's been observed many times on the forum that this problem doesn't happen with other audio interfaces, just the AxeFX/FM3. In any case, almost all DAWs have a preference value you can set to compensate for this error.

Screen Shot 2021-04-14 at 6.42.34 AM.png
 
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b8ck8tt said:
the right way to measure amount of this offset is performing this trick with creating a loop, just like I've described above.
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In my opinion, the routing you are using is not enough accurate, for the reasons I told you before.

So I find that your process is not the right way, because your process can be more accurate.

Anyway, if you feel fine with the routing you have used, it's not necessary to change it! ;)

b8ck8tt said:
The issue is in the last part, in which the recording, after I've, let's imagine, perfectly played my bass to the click from the DAW, is not aligned automatically with the grid. And it's so much off, my DAW doesn't even have a range big enough to compensate manually for it, so I have to drag every audio clip and move it manually 58 ms earlier.
Click to expand...
58 ms is a LOT of time
Have you tried other USB cables (shorter ones)?
Have you tried another DAWs?
 
jordikt said:
In my opinion, the routing you are using is not enough accurate, for the reasons I told you before.

So I find that your process is not the right way, because your process can be more accurate.
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I must have misunderstood you then, apologies. Just to be clear, I'm using a simplest patch possible: IN1 -> OUT1.
By the way, I've tried the same process on my other patches with amps, cabs and all sorts of effects, and it added just 3 ms compared to the most basic patch - very impressive!

jordikt said:
Have you tried other USB cables (shorter ones)?
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Yes, the one I'm using is very short. But I don't think that's the reason anyway, considering I'm not alone with the issue.

jordikt said:
Have you tried another DAWs?
Click to expand...
Yes, I've got 48 ms in both Bitwig and standalone Maschine software (screenshots attached).Bitwig.pngMaschine.png
 
GlennO said:
You only need to set the preference once. After that, all recordings will align properly.
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Yes, I know that. I have the same feature it in Cubase.

I was just curious to know how many samples or ms you are correcting your recording tracks.
 
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