Why does my midi keyboard lag

Dedicated soundcard. Frequently, a independent sound card will shorten the signal chain in the box and most importantly encode the signal locally. Easiest of all upgrade cables to USB type C and use 3. I think there may be 2 milliseconds on slower machines, which is for audio, and even then it's suitable for vocal monitoring.

In any case, the cable itself is to blame, and nothing onboard the PC can change that. The signal you are sending is pretty small, but how fast the actual copper wire responds to electrification is most likely to blame. Silicate is pretty fast, so with any reasonably up to date system this should be your go to answer for everything latency related. In short, if it can carry a mastering grade vocal sample, it can carry a MIDI note. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 8 years, 10 months ago. Active 11 months ago. Viewed 45k times. System Info Win 7 64bit i7 QM 2. Improve this question.

Giannis Giannis. The delay you're noticing is primarily from your sound card, not from your keyboard. Yes I am aware of that. What brand and model is your laptop, or more interesting, which sound chip does it use? Ken-AbdiasSoftware I updated question with system info — Giannis. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. When this happens, navigate to your audio driver settings within your digital audio workstation DAW.

Adjust any sliders or numbers to get your Buffer set at around 10ms or lower. The drivers are designed to do lots of different tasks. In short this is a low latency driver designed specifically for the function of reducing latency in audio production. Bear in mind that ASIO4ALL is not available for Mac but the Core Audio drivers that come pre-installed on most Mac computers and laptops for a long time now should be more than adequate to deal with music production.

This will take a bit of playing around with and will only really work if your latency is a consistent amount. If your latency amount varies this may not work. Latency can be increased when your Audio Input Device is enabled. Having the computer or laptop try and process audio and MIDI signals at the same time may be causing latency.

The number of samples processed per second by your computer or laptop is referred to simply as the sample rate. If the sample rate is too low, then latency goes up accordingly. You can increase your sample rate within your DAW to combat latency.

Similar to with buffer size the further you push it to drive down the latency the more pressure you put on the computer or laptop. System updates and background applications are examples of processes that can burden your CPU with more than it can handle, leading to latency complications among others.

Try and keep the computer or laptop you use for audio production dedicated to that purpose. The more applications you try and run at one time the more strain is placed on the CPU and this means latency is more likely to occur. When purchasing a laptop or PC make sure you follow the minimum specs in this guidance to ensure the machine is capable of handling the high levels of data that audio production requires.

For a full guide on laptop specs check out this article , and for my latest recommendations click here. It may take a bit of time, but go through and delete plug-ins one by one, testing as you go so you can discover whether one of them is the faulty missing puzzle piece. You can input the track using your keyboard with the delay as close as you can and then go through on the piano roll and manually move the notes so they are quantized i.

These interfaces often connect to a laptop through a USB port. Always opt for cabled connections instead to avoid latency. You can also try using plugin headphones instead of wireless if you are using headphones and experience lag.

Most computers are not made with audio production in mind and will not have a very powerful soundcard installed. A good soundcard can help avoid latency issues. Instead of relying on your built-in soundcard and before you think of installing a better one, instead, use a dedicated audio interface. An external audio interface will be a lot more powerful and often has a number of useful ports for plugging in MIDI cables and microphones.

You can also simply plug it into your laptop with a USB. Audio production software and equipment requires a more powerful computer than one intended for internet browsing and emails. Try to get a newer model with 3. A computer with good specs for audio production will leave no room for latency issues and will run a lot smoother and faster in general. You do not need a computer to use a MIDI keyboard. These devices act as a portable sound bank, allowing you to plug your MIDI keyboard in and play it on the go.

You will need to purchase an Apple lightning connection to USB adapter, or connection kit. Once your driver is installed, make sure it is enabled by going to your settings in FLStudio and choosing it as your driver.

USB is said to be a lot faster and is less likely to cause latency due to a more direct connection between the MIDI and the computer or device. The maximum length of a MIDI cable is 20 feet before cable length has a significant impact on latency unless the cable quality is very high.

MIDI signal can carry 16 channels. Latency problems with MIDI keyboards are something every producer goes through at some point and it is a truly frustrating issue. There is always a solution, finding the cause of the problem is the tricky part. We'll review each speaker range and compare them to each other. Skip to content.