MIDI Latency

I am just testing out Ardour on Windows to see if it can be the DAW in my studio.

After tweaking a bit with the signal routing i finally got MIDI working accepting input from my piano through a USB-connected Steinberg Midex 8 MIDI interface. This drives two rack synths.

But i experience horrible latency when i play. How can i trim this so that it is possible to play without latency? The synths are hardware and all that is needed is the MIDI-signals to be routed correctly, i cannot image that latency is accepted in that case.

Kindest regards
Johnny

In short: lower the buffersize (Menu > Window > Audio/MIDI setup).

Thanks a lot, that helped. I chose the lowest buffer size … will this mean that overhead increases so that if i make a song with many signals, some of them may end up wrong, so that it sounds bad?

It won’t change the quality of the sound, but if you make the buffer small enough that the computer can’t do all the processing you’ve asked it to in the time you’ve given it, you will get xruns, which usually sound like crackles and pops. For MIDI latency, you want the smallest buffer size where you get no xruns.

Lowering the buffer is an excellent way to track and diminish latency. However the more tracks and plug-ins that you compile or use latency will return and or the audio will start to crackle and pop. Then you can increase the buffer to compensate. Depending on your system CPU, RAM, Number of plugins in use and or DSP processing card [if you use or own one] latency can usually find a way to sneak back into the picture. If you are simply mixing tracks then you can increase your buffer size.
Tracking = decrease buffer size
Mixing = increase buffer size
There are some really useful videos on YouTube which go into depth explaining latency.

I don’t seem to have a problem with MIDI latency with rack modules and keyboard synths connected via MIDI. I have a MidiPlus 2x2, and just route MIDI in and out on my track to my interface. How are you monitoring the rack modules? You may be experiencing audio latency if you monitor those thru the software.